


Afrikaan Voices

by Jaxiferous



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Africa, Akuma, Babysitting, Escort Mission, Gen, Government Unrest, Militia, Original Characters - Freeform, Promoted To Parent, South Africa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-28 07:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 62,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaxiferous/pseuds/Jaxiferous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanda takes an escort mission, and it goes awry when he is stranded in South Africa with a baby and only one destination - Cairo, Egypt. Unexpected parenthood, a tribe prophecy, his past, and Afrikaan voices follow him on his trek towards his destination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Escort Mission

Kanda glanced through the document with a slight expression of disdain. It was menial and easy and much too trivial for him to take on, but Komui...

"Please please please please please - " Komui pleaded, on hands and knees at Kanda's feet. The Japanese Exorcist stared at him with a sneer towards the Chinese scientist's grovelling behavior. This mission wasn't worth his time! It was so simple that it was absurd! Komui's voice incessantly ran in his head like a plane flying circles around him waving a giant banner, and he shoved the man away with a boot.

"Fine. If it'll get you to shut up," he said vehemently. Komui cheered.

"I'm sorry. I know you don't take small fries like this, but seriously, we've only got so many people on task, and we've got absolutely no one who could navigate. It'll take you a day or two, nothing more than that, I'm sure," Komui promised, seating himself back at his desk with perfect composure once more. Kanda rubbed the bridge of his nose and asked, "What about Lavi? Bookman? Klaud, Lenalee, Chaoji? I can't be the only one off-duty." Komui steepled his fingers, his look suddenly serious.

"Lavi is stuck in Argentina at present. The mission he took turns out to be more complicated than we originally believed. He won't be back for quite a while. Bookman is in China searching for some obscure text from one of Beijing's libraries that may have something to do with the Noah and had escaped the Bookman Organization's attention. Klaud went to Australia, Lenalee broke her leg five days ago, and Chaoji is with Klaud. Timothy's too young to go anywhere without Klaud for supervision, Allen's been gone for months in America, Froi is nowhere to be found, Noise happens to be in China with Bookman as extra support, Miranda and Crowley are in Romania-"

"I get the point, Komui." Kanda's tone was less than pleased. He wouldn't ever say it aloud, but he was slightly worried by the sudden spike in activity. He'd never known the Order to be completely and utterly empty. Lenalee was only present due to injury, and no doubt the Vatican would issue an order for her the minute she was done healing and showed the slightest amount of capability. Still, such a low level mission didn't make sense to Kanda. Why was he the one sent to go and take care of something so... basic?

"You won't have to take care of him long. Just a few hours. He's only a couple of months old, and he's off his mother's breast milk, so you don't have to worry about that. Not to mention, he doesn't eat much and from what I've heard, he doesn't cry too much either," Komui said, flipping through his notes. Kanda also looked back over his dossier, frowning a little.

Basic Mission Overview: Escort Nthanda, eight months old, from East London to Johannesburg. Rendezvous at Johannesburg; take an Ark opening back to London.

"You want to be more specific?" Kanda asked, throwing the file carelessly onto Komui's desk. The Chinese man took the dossier and stated, "How much more do you need to know? Besides, I thought you didn't want this mission?"

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?" Kanda asked. In truth, Kanda was incredibly bored. Most of the Finders were off somewhere else, doing their own thing, and the ones that were making port at the Order were boring and worn out, no challenge at all. Kanda had no one to spar with (though it wasn't like anyone would want to spar with him in the first place). He wasn't exactly an intellectual, and he didn't enjoy sitting in a dusty library reading old books written by dead men telling him about philosophy or some such useless information that wouldn't help him. Any other day, he'd have kicked this to the curb, but Kanda was actually, dare he say it, longing to go on a mission. Being cooped up did not suit well with him.

"Nthanda was orphaned nearly two weeks ago when his mother was crushed by a building. There are several warring factions in South America right now, and she was too close to a burning building. He contains an Innocence shard within his chest, but none of us are sure what it does just yet. We think it's what saved him from being crushed in that building along with his mother. He was completely untouched when the Finders found him. The nearest Black Order accessed church is in Johannesburg, so that's where you'll be headed first before taking a train to East London. It's very easy, I assure you. The only thing that makes us choose you over a Finder is the fact that the area is war torn at the moment, and you're, um, well, a little more resilient than the usual victim of circumstance." Kanda lifted an eyebrow sardonically at the mention of his 'resiliency', and he sighed. Perhaps he'd see some action. It'd relieve the monotony, if not anything else.

"So you'll take it?" Komui asked, half hopeful and half suspicious. Kanda was more flighty than most would think, vacillating over decisions for several minutes and changing his mind often. Kanda blinked, and Komui smiled.

"The Ark's already opened in the Ark room. I'm telling you, it'll be easy." Kanda could see Komui resisting the urge to knock on his desk. He had, no doubt, just jinxed his trip, but Kanda wasn't superstitious. Kanda looked off with a disgruntled expression and huffed.

* * *

 

The train's whistle blared out into the dark, night air of East London as Kanda got off the train. He was dressed in European attire with his hair tied back to the nape of his neck. Komui had suggested stealth among all other things for this mission - attracting the Akuma was a dangerous idea given the fact Kanda would be guarding a baby, and it'd be difficult for him to shield something that small and squirmy while battling what were basically demonic, walking Gatling guns. Still, Kanda was an intimidating figure in his suit with his suitcase in hand. His sword was strapped to his back, sheathed in such a way that it resembled an instrument case rather than a sheath in order to limit panic and tension from civilians and keep him inconspicuos as a target for Akuma.

Kanda had been ordered to rendezvous with a local Finder, one of the few stationed in South America, before continuing on. Kanda scratched at his ear idly, fingering the small communicator attached to the shell of his ear. He hated the things, but they were a lot handier than using a golem. He was using a new long-range device that had just come out, and Komui had said he was 'lucky' to get one on such short notice, though Kanda couldn't have cared less if they'd attached a continent-long string to two cups and stretched them over the entire country of Africa.

The Japanese Exorcist eyed a black man with a wide grin wearing a variant of the tan Finder uniform, cut off at the sleeves to keep off the heat. Kanda was already sweating, despite the night air being unseasonably cool. It was humid, and the jump from temperate to tropical had shocked Kanda's system. The black man walked up to Kanda with a bounce in his step, and he said in heavily accented English, "Welcohme to East Lohndun, suh. I take yoah begs for ya." The black man immediately scooped up both bags with a strange grace, and Kanda frowned as he watched the man begin to head out of the station. Kanda followed behind stoically, barely even glancing at the very, very European train stop.

They walked down several streets before reaching an automobile. It was a bit old with a fleck of rust or two, but it looked serviceable. The black man was already loading Kanda's cases into the trunk, and he said, "M'nem is Dingane, boht you ken call me Din. Do not care if you want or not." He shrugged, and Din climbed into the driver's seat. All this time, Kanda had said nary a word to him, but he climbed inside the car regardless with a slight feeling of trepidation.

As they trundled down the road, Kanda noticed something that unnerved him. He was used to going to other countries and learning to adapt, to learn bits and pieces of language as only necessary, to navigate by a mental map and memorize strange alphabets, if not understand them. This place... it was so European, he would not have guessed he'd have left England other than the fact there was a significant portion of blacks walking the streets along with drunkard whites in the horrid humidity.

"What your name, suh?" Din asked, and Kanda taciturnly answered, "Kanda." The man nodded vigorously, and he stated, "You not from Breetayn, ah you, Mistuh Kanda?" Kanda looked at Din through the rear view mirror, and he minutely shook his head. Din nodded his again with the same enthusiasm.

"You tink different, then." That was the extent of their conversation until they reached the orphanage, and that was perfectly fine with Kanda. As they got out, he inspected the front of the building with scrutiny in the dim streetlights. It was a sad, almost ramshackle place with a slightly charred, perhaps even moldy, front and a wooden sign stating orphanage along with the word in French and German. No Afrikaan translation was put on the front, more evidence of European influence. Din shook his head, and he said, "It a sad, sad weruld, Mistuh Kanda. Them children, I dunno 'bout. It not seem so good heuh for them. But ain' nowhere for them. No one wan' em." Kanda's eyebrows drew together just slightly, and a memory assailed him, one that he knew was not his yet was his at the same time.

Yes, it was an orphanage, but he didn't live there. Other people lived there, other unfortunates. His mother said not to look at them - it was bad luck. Then again, she also said to pay money to the orphanage because some were not as lucky as them, but how could you pay someone you could not look at?

Kanda disregarded the memory. They came and went, activated by random stimuli. They only happened every day or so, and sometimes they were as sparse as a few weeks apart. He no longer minded them. At one time, they would've had him killed, but now he knew they were nothing more than a piece of a life he no longer had a connection to. He grunted in response to Din's comment and began walking towards the orphanage.

He knocked on the door loudly. There was no answer. He waited another few minutes before pounding again, and yet again there was no answer. He pounded again-

and a voice shouted, in a thick British accent, "WAIT A MINUTE, OHLROIGHT? DAMN, CAN'T GI' A WINK A' SLEEP DOWN 'ERE, WOT WIF PEOPLE BANGIN' ON TH'DOOR AT BLOOMIN' MIDNIGHT!" There was the sound of heavy footsteps down the stairs before the door was suddenly yanked open by a dour-faced woman with puffy eyes. She might've been pretty. She was skinny-waisted and petite with a red, full mouth and large liquid eyes, but the awful expression of disdain she had ruined all of her features worse than a scar across the face. Kanda glared her down, and he stated, "Nthanda here? I'm from the Order." The woman frowned at him, pouting. She leaned up against the doorjamb, exposing the leonine curves of her body - something that Kanda didn't at all appreciate. He intended to go home this very night at best, and this woman was making it awfully difficult. Behind him, he could hear Din begin snickering.

"Wot? Ya nigguh, whatchu laughin' at? You ain't got no right to be snarkin' at a dame loike me; your kind like me enough," the woman said handily, and Din's happy, mirthful expression slowly dulled to one of chagrin.

"Uh, sohrry, mum, didn' mean nohthin' by it," Din said, and Kanda felt a pang of annoyance at both how easily Din was giving up and how rude this woman happened to be.

He shoved his way in, pushing the woman aside as she complained.

"Tha's trespassin'! I'll have the bobbies on you-"

"Just show me where the damn baby is, and I'll leave," Kanda grumbled, giving her a harsh stare. The woman stood there, hiking her flimsy night robe higher on her shoulders over her nightie before pouting and saying, "Ya could've just asked. No need to fuss." She started up the rickety stairs, and Kanda finally took a look at his surroundings. He was in an eight by eight foot room that was packed full of beds save for a single aisle that led to a hallway. All the walls were peeling paint, and the floors looked like they'd been half-eaten by water damage and termites. He was almost afraid he'd fall through the floor. The beds were all full to the brim with children aged sixteen and under. Most were asleep, though a few managed to sit up and stare at Kanda in confusion and wariness.

"Packed in, all like sardines. I knew it," Din muttered under his breath. He brushed a hand over his shaven head, his usually serene face slightly distorted by discontent at the plight of the children in the orphanage. Kanda was of a less sympathetic mind, though he did feel a twinge of compassion for the children within the orphanage. His own childhood had been hell, so he could only say to these kids to suck it up and get a move on. Keep moving, and eventually whatever happened to you would be behind you... The sound of pitter-patter feet met his ears, and he looked down to see a small girl in a long t-shirt. It hung off one shoulder, and it drifted around her ankles like a massive dress. Her wide, dark eyes stared up at him, and she fingered her hair as she stared. Kanda looked down at her with mild puzzlement.

"What?"

The girl finally pointed up at him and touched her hair, saying a word in a language he didn't understand. Din chuckled as Kanda lifted his eyebrows in surprise. He hadn't expected her to answer.

"Suh, she wants to touch yoah hair," Din stated. Kanda stared at him in disgruntled disbelief, and Din shrugged.

"Why would I do that?" Kanda asked, and Din said, "Curiosity - good to feed. Let her, ain't hurt nohthin'." Kanda looked down at the girl. She was still standing there, overshadowed by Kanda's height and yet she still stared at him expectantly. If anything, he could admit she was a brave little girl. Several children were staring at the girl and Kanda, waiting for some sort of response. Kanda sighed out his nose, pulling out the hair tie that held his hair back. He threw it over his shoulder and bent down, rolling his eyes as the girl gleefully laughed as she softly felt the long strands. She pulled her fingers through it, yanking, and Kanda muttered, "Ouch! Easy!" The other children gave titters-

"OI! Why do I hear laughin'? Ain'chu s'posed to be asleep, ya li'l whelps?" The woman's annoying, ear-pinching voice was like an gunshot. All the children flew under covers, hustled under pillows, and pretended to be asleep. Even the little girl who'd asked to touch Kanda's hair was gone, conditioned to respond to that woman's voice like a greyhound to a starting bell after a hare. Kanda found himself feeling as if he'd missed something important when the little girl had left, as if some answer to a question he didn't know he'd had was about to be answered up until that moment. Now she was gone, and Kanda wasn't about to expend the effort to find her.

The stairs creaked as the woman came down, her hair piled high on her head and make-up carelessly splotched on her face. In her arms was a squirming, crying bundle of humanity that Kanda would be stuck with for only the next hour or so, hopefully. The orphanage caretaker thoughtlessly handed Nthanda to Kanda without another word. Kanda tentatively took the baby, its crying and wailing immediately grating on him. Apparently, Nthanda didn't appreciate being woken up at midnight either, and he was just that much more vocal about it. The woman leaned on one leg as she crossed her arms over an ample chest, and she stated, "You know, you don't have to leave right away if you ain't got yeself a noice room. I kin give ya one for a proice." Her emphasis on him and him alone immediately repulsed Kanda. It wasn't just the total, blatant lack of respect - even Kanda had that beaten into him - but it was also just... did he really look like the type? That was just insulting. Not to mention she didn't even bother to look at Din, as if he were subhuman, but then again Kanda was used to people giving others bad treatment for race or other reasons.

"I've got no money. No thank you." This, of course, was a blatant lie. Of course he had money. However, this woman was really beginning to chafe his nerves. Din looked away with a telling expression that said "I know where this is going". The woman bit her lip in an offended manner, and she said, " 'Course. Cuz, yanno, I jus' run this place outta the koindness o' my own heart." The children were curiously peeping, but a single glance from the woman silenced them back to bed.

"Them woives that usually take care o' them got families 'n all, and poor li'l Bertha gets stuck here all lonely-loike at night," she said, attempting sympathy and only incurring a coquettish air. Kanda growled, "No. Thank you." Din covered up a snicker with a cough, and he said, "Madam Bertha, we be needin' go now. Got sohme places t'be soon, gotta ketch the train, right?" Kanda turned heel and followed Din, leaving behind a rather offended Bertha and several curious children.

"What kids were they?" Kanda asked, trying to speak over the wailing Nthanda imposed on the both of them. The shorter black man stated, "War victohms. Parents die in bomb blast, kids left alone. Orph'nages like that all over the place. Black people ain't happy and white people ain't happy - make war wid each other over stupid things. Leave both white and black kids by themselves, not even look at 'em." Dingane shrugged. "Sohme try very, very hard, keep them fed, happy, in clothes wid smiles. Others... not try so hard, y'know?" Kanda nodded, cradling Nthanda awkwardly as they walked back to the car. He looked down at the bundle, the dark face scrunched with displeasure. Kanda held back a sniff of disgust. Babies... not his strong suit.

"You sho that the right bebie, suh?" Din asked, pointing to the small child. Kanda undid a few of the swaddling clothes to reveal the infant's chest, which was branded with a gold circle over his breastbone. Kanda nodded.

"Right kid," Kanda stated tersely as he got into the backseat. Din nodded to himself and clambered into the front seat. They drove down the road back towards the station... and then were stopped by a couple of men wearing uniforms. They were all white men with mustaches of varying volume carrying bobby clubs and wearing flat-topped hats. There was a barricade over the road, and Kanda frowned.

"Sorry, but this district is closed off," one of the men said, leaning down towards the window of the car. Din smiled and said, "Of course, suh, right, right. Why is closed down?" The man looked off into the distance nervously while the others gave anxious looks around, and he answered, "There was a bombing at the train station, and we are told to redirect all traffic, black and white alike, along a detour route. I'm afraid you'll have to find another train station, because this one's been blown to smithereens." Kanda suppressed a groan. He fingered the communicator on his ear, and he flipped it on as Din drove into the detour the men had outlined along the street.

"Komui, there's a problem," Kanda stated with a sigh. It took a moment or two before Komui answered, "Really? What's that?"

"The train's been delayed. Probably permanently." Komui was silent... and then he said, "Let me guess. Rebels went and bombed the train station?" Kanda didn't bother to answer. Komui didn't bother to elaborate. After several moments, Kanda finally asked, "What do you want us to do now?" Komui paused hesitantly before saying, "Try to reach Johannesburg if you can. If not..." Kanda frowned.

"Komui, what happens if I can't get to Johannesburg?" Kanda asked. Din turned his head slightly to look at Kanda out of the corner of his eye.

"The only other Black Order accessible churches we have in Africa are in Johannesburg, Cairo, and Algiers. You'd have to travel from one end of the continent to the other in order to get to an accessible church," Komui said, and Kanda was suddenly thrown around as the car unexpectedly flipped. Kanda's hearing was knocked out of his head as an explosion seemed to catch up with the flipping motion of the car. The scream of metal against stone met deaf ears as the force of the blast threw the car into a building. Kanda felt his head smash into the side of the car, glass raining down as the window broke. He curled around Nthanda, instinct prompting him to protect the little, fragile life he'd been handed.

As the dust cleared and the voices hushed from their screaming, Kanda looked up blearily. He was bleeding from the side of his head, the child screaming in his arms. Din was screaming, his arm crushed by the car door and the weight of the car on top of it. Kanda unsheathed his sword, carefully cutting his way out of the car. He began to saw his way through the car, freeing Din in the process with a great heave. The Finder stood up in bleary pain, looking around at the chaos.

"What happened?" Kanda asked, his voice sounded muffled as if his ears were stuffed with cotton. Suddenly, a high-pitched cackling met his ears, and Kanda immediately grabbed Din and dragged him down to the ground behind a wall. The man shouted in loud protest and pain as he landed with a thump inside the hollow shell of the building. Kanda handed him Nthanda, who was wailing as if the world was coming to an end. Kanda activated his Innocence with a soft, almost lullaby-like invocation of its name. It glowed for a moment before reverting to the dull shine of metal. Kanda stayed stock still, watching outside, looking for something...

Finally, he ran out into the street, the sound of his feet echoing on the buildings over the wail of women, and his sword clashed with something almost unseen. He stared into the eyes of a massive, armored being with teeth like knives and eyes deeper than an ocean.

"Hello, Exorcist. Like my present?" it asked in a slithering, worming voice like cold, congealed oil over skin. Kanda disengaged, skidding backwards as the Level Three disappeared in a blur of speed. Kanda stood there listening in the street as everyone else remained transfixed by the sight they had just witnessed. He closed his eyes, calming his breathing until he came up with a distorted, sound-based map of his surroundings. Marie had taught him this trick. You can always hear them before you see them. Your hearing isn't as good as mine, but I think you're better than I think you are.

Kanda suddenly whirled around, extending his sword arm. The Akuma ran itself straight through over it, choking as it gripped the blade in what seemed like confusion. Din watched from his hiding place in the rubble with something akin to amazement as Kanda dispatched the Akuma with a quick flick of the wrist. His breathing was labored as he held Nthanda against his chest protectively. No man that fast could be human. No man that calm could be human. They should've died, and that thing should've killed him, and yet...

He stood, hardly ruffled. He walked, hardly faltering. Din was suddenly very glad that this scary, scary man was on his side.

"I guess this means I'm keeping him for now," Kanda said. He reached down, picking Nthanda up rather roughly. Din wanted to snatch the baby back of his hands, thinking such coarse digits shouldn't be able to handle something so fragile after the feat of strength they'd just displayed. Fear coursed through Din, but he suppressed it. He was an Exorcist - this was normal. He'd seen it before, but there was something different about this performance of strength and agility. It was too... uncanny.

"You're injured. We're going to a hospital," the Japanese man said in clipped tones, hauling Din up to his feet. The Exorcist immediately started walking down the street.

"You know where you goin', suh?" Din asked, finally gathering his mental faculties. Kanda looked over his shoulder carelessly and stated honestly, "No." Din felt his usual smile crawl onto his face, but it felt like it didn't fit right there. Too much going on in one night. Kanda looked forwards again, still walking down the decimated street. Women screamed over their dead children, and men walked around with glazed eyes. Both blacks and whites were shellshocked and absolutely jarred by the sudden explosion that was no doubt neither the first nor last the city would see. Kanda looked behind him, watching Din. The man seemed dazed as well, but not quite as much as the others around him. Good. He was already used to the sights of war.

"Hurry. You'll bleed to death," Kanda said tersely, and they continued on.

* * *

 

The hotel room was just beginning to lighten with the first rays of the day. Kanda had sat up all night long, turning over a broken communicator in his hands. He had no way of contacting the Order, which mean he had two options. He could stay and wait for another contingent of Exorcists to come and help him, but he'd die before that happen. That was just disgraceful, as if he was saying he couldn't complete this mission, an easy mission no less, by himself. His second option was to find a way up to Johannesburg by any means necessary. However, with both options, there was a single, perplexing, and, dare he say it, scary problem.

Nthanda was swaddled in new blankets, face scrunched up in a dream. He gave a small whimper before turning over on his side. Kanda carefully turned him back over onto his back. Kanda hadn't ever thought that something could scare him quite as much as a small, innocent, completely helpless baby could. He hadn't gotten any sleep because the loud noises would wake the kid up, and then he'd get hungry (that posed another unique problem, seeing as Kanda didn't know how to feed him), and then he'd just get cranky. What scared him more than anything else, though, was that the child would turn over and suffocate to death. Kanda's one task was to keep him alive, and there was something terrifying about it all of a sudden. It had started out as a simple 'escort mission.' Now, it was entailing actual care on his part, and he wasn't sure if he was cut out for it.

Still, he was careful to mask this sudden, new found terror. He looked outside, where the streets were just beginning to wake. The vendors were wheeling out carts, and men and women shouted to one another in greeting. Their smiles were happy and bright, despite the horrors of last night and the bombings that had occurred. Several had been near enough to rock the building, but Kanda couldn't see where they had originated; his side of the hotel was facing the wrong way, away from the bombings.

Kanda walked into the bathroom, feeling fuzzy headed and disgruntled. He stared into the mirror at his frazzled self. His hair was a complete and utter mess. He hadn't even bothered to fix it when he'd come in last night. It was too much hassle, and the kid was already screaming his head off anyways. His eyes had bags under them, no doubt from his sleepless night. He stretched out his cheeks, the pale skin not even bothering to flush under the pressure of his fingers. He let go, and his face reverted back to its normal shape. He looked unhealthy, all in all, which was a first.

And for a moment, his reflection changed ever so slightly, and it was as if some other person was staring back at him. His reflection was the same... but there was something fundamentally off, changing Kanda into someone else entirely. Kanda frowned in vexation, and his reflection was his once more. He drummed his fingers on the counter underneath the mirror, and he dismissed this strange occurrence. He hadn't slept, and perhaps he was more prone to strange imaginings under such conditions.

He walked back towards the doorway, staring into his room. The kid was still lying on the bed, fingers in his mouth as he breathed loudly. Kanda felt that same unsettling feeling clothe and choke him. It seemed he was about to have parenthood thrust upon him.

He would take it as a challenge.


	2. What To Expect When You Weren't Expecting

Kanda looked up at the imposing building, sighing to himself as he switched the baby to his other arm. He'd visited Din in the hospital. He was going to be realized in the next week or so, and until then Kanda would just have to survive on his own. Of course, Kanda was going to have to come up with a new way to approach this problem, so he was doing it the only way he really knew how - treat it like an enemy. The first thing that one did before attacking an enemy was to learn as much about them as one could. Knowledge was always the best weapon (though Kanda himself usually decided that tackling the problem head on with little to no detail was the best solution). Therefore, he would learn whatever he could about childcare and the rest.

As much as he hated reading, especially reading English, he didn't want to ask a random woman or some matron about how to take care of a child. That was just demeaning. He would be able to do it on his own, and he knew it. With this mindset, he waltzed right into the building with a baby on one arm and a suitcase on the other. However, as he stepped inside, he realized that he was completely lost.

The library was enormous. Rows upon rows upon rows of books, with staircases everywhere. There were people climbing ladders into the upper levels of shelves, and Kanda could already feel his intellect start to shrink within itself as it succumb to the sheer amount of information that was presented before him. There was no way he was just going to  _find_ some book on -

"Excuse me, sir, but do you need some help?" a young man asked, toting a large armful of books. Kanda blinked, almost dazed, and he said before he could actually think, "No." The man looked mildly surprised, but he nodded and said, "Well, all right then. Good day, sir." He walked off, his armful of books almost seeming to sway as he walked down a corridor lined with tomes. Kanda found himself lost among the books, surrounded by paper and ink.

As if on cue, Nthanda began to wail loudly. Kanda sighed with resignation. He'd better start looking.

About an hour later, he was ready to pull out his hair. For one, the kid wouldn't stop screaming. For two, he couldn't find  _anything._ Of course, his method was to pull out random books and check what they were about. For three, he didn't read a whole lot of English - mission dossiers were the extent of his light reading. For four... he had no idea what he was doing. He finally sat down in a chair with a great ' _whump'_ and sat there, staring at Nthanda as if the child were the spawn of Satan himself.

"Uh... sir? Could you quiet him, please? We have other people here who wish to read," an elderly, stuffy looking woman stated. She wore half-moon glasses, and her hair was piled on her head in a neat, prim bun that probably kept her face from sagging. Kanda resisted the urge to glare at her. He sighed as he gathered up Nthanda.

"Yeah. I'll just move." However, she noticed Kanda was awfully awkward in handling the child, his hands more used to the delicate use of a slim blade rather than a cumbersome human infant. She touched his arm, and he stared at her curiously.

"What?" he asked, rather defensively. She opened her mouth, trying to find words...

"What were you looking for?" she asked. She gestured to him to hand her the child, and he did so. She frowned as she held the boy, and she suddenly undid his swaddling cloths.

"Um, childcare, actually," Kanda said, his voice strong but still holding a hint of embarrassment. He was hesitant as she laid the baby on the table, and then peered in his diaper. She suddenly jerked back as a miasma suddenly smacked them both in the face, and Kanda cringed. He'd forgotten - babies needed changing, too.

"Oh dear. Yes, yes you do need a book on childcare. Here, I'll take care of this little one for now, and I'll show you to that section of the library," the old woman said, replacing Nthanda's diaper to its original position. She picked Nthanda up with a practiced motion Kanda was sure he'd never be able to replicate. He followed her with chagrined footsteps, suddenly feeling out of his depth in a way he didn't think possible. Still, he held his head up high, glaring at those that would stare at him in confusion. His look withered glances and shrunk countenances as they felt the heat of his gaze, and they quickly turned their faces away.

The woman gestured to a corridor that looked just like every other corridor Kanda had seen.

"This is the section for childcare. Do feel free to browse, take notes, and such. There's stationary on the desks, and there are pens. Please, do try not to make a mess," the woman said haughtily, and with that she walked off. Kanda, suddenly caught between a rock and a hard place, decided to leave his sword in the corridor as he followed the woman. He didn't want to run the risk of him getting kidnapped, as unlikely as that may be. Akuma could be crafty, and Kanda was not willing to bet a child's life on the presumption that someone was human.

However, he figured that the woman was probably a human, after she deftly changed the baby's diaper on a table outside of a bathroom. He blinked as he watched her wash off the child, wipe him clean, replace his diaper with a new cloth, and then set him back down after a brief blush of talcum powder. Nthanda sat there in what seemed like awe, and he slapped his hands on the table. The woman smiled to herself, and she looked behind her in surprise.

"Hmmm, you followed?" she said, looking down his nose at his stern, harsh countenance.

"Yeah. Got a problem?" he asked gruffly, and she sighed.

"You, sir, need a few lessons in child care, I see," she stated, folding her hands behind her back as she began to walk away. "I suggest you start reading those books, or else that babe will not live to see next week, much less the rest of his life." Kanda resisted the urge to scoff as he followed her back to the aisle full of childcare books. The woman gave a sharp sniff before walking off, and Kanda toted his charge into the aisle with him, sitting down in a large, plush chair. He picked up a random book on the small end table next to him, and he began to read it.

_Childcare and the Modern Mother..._

After nearly five books of absolutely mind-numbing how-to books, Kanda was ready to give up right there and then. So far as he could tell, there was plenty of information, but he had no way of remembering it. He'd taken a notepad and pen with him, but he'd put down nothing to paper. There was just so much that went into taking care of a kid, from bottle-feeding to changing diapers to cleaning clothes to testing milk to boiling the bottles to every other thing that he could think of...

Suddenly, Nthanda began to wail, and several of the library aides turned to stare at him. He returned their curious looks with withering glares of his own, and they went back about their business rather promptly. Nthanda squirmed in Kanda's lap, trying to escape, and Kanda had a hard time trying to read and hold him at the same time. Finally, he gave up, chucking the book back onto the nearest table and picking up the squirming, crying baby. He glared at it as if it were the spawn of the devil itself, and he checked the diaper rather hesitantly. Nothing there but a rather dark bum and some cloth. No smells either, for which Kanda was thankful for. The kid was just bawling his eyes out, and Kanda wasn't sure why.

"Damn it, kid, what do you want?" he muttered to himself. He had no way of knowing what the child was crying for. It wasn't as if he could ask him - he was too young to speak. He couldn't just tell from how he was screaming either. To him, all screams sounded the same. For all he knew, the kid was just cranky.

And suddenly, it hit him. The baby was hungry. After all, kids had to eat. Even Kanda had to eat every now and again, albeit the fact he ate rather unhealthy foods, but he could afford it with his metabolism. He set Nthanda down in the chair he had originally occupied, and he began to pore over the books he'd already read. Now, what did they say about feeding babies? Especially ones that were almost a year old... He flipped through the book, finding nearly nothing other than pap, which was a foreign word to him completely. He lunged forward suddenly as Nthanda nearly rolled out of the chair, crying his little lungs out, and Kanda felt like he was about to lose his mind already. Finally, he picked up the kid, and he stuffed a few of the books into his bag. He'd just check them out, find a place to hole up for a little while (his hotel had kicked him out after a problem with the bellhop calling him a woman), and find some food for the kid.

He started to walk out when suddenly, someone said,  _"Stupid, can't even feed a baby. Even I knew how, and I didn't even have a mama to show me."_ Kanda stopped in his tracks, and he slowly turned to look over his shoulder. There was no one in the aisle behind him, but that voice had to have come from somewhe-

 _"Are you even listenin' to me? Can't believe they picked you to take care of my baby. That just ain't right to send a man to do a woman's job. Hey!"_ Suddenly, a book hit Kanda smack dab in the back of his head, and he turned around in a whirl to stare down the aisle.

There was no one there. He was sure of it. But someone had to have thrown that book, and someone had to be throwing books at him...

_"Finally got your attention. 'S what I thought."_

"The hell...?" he muttered under his breath, his eyes wide with confusion and maybe a hint of fear. Was he going crazy... He knew that taking care of a kid could drive a man insane, but he didn't think it was literal. Nthanda stopped crying, frowning for a minute before grabbing onto Kanda's arm and gurgling in a disconcerting manner. Kanda stood stockstill, and he walked into the aisle. He licked his lips nervously. If he was truly going crazy, he was a danger to his charge, and if he  _wasn't_ crazy, that mean that something very... strange was going on.

 _"Damn, that took a lot of effort. Books is heavy. Hey! Listen to me! Don't you walk away from me!"_  Kanda kept walking, almost retreating even, with Nthanda squirming and crying in his arms, pulling on his hair, and just plain throwing a fit. Kanda winced with every yank, but he stolidly ignored the voice harassing him at every step.

 _"Stupid ass, I wanna help you! You feed him anything that's been boiled!"_ Kanda stopped. Another thought occurred to him. Perhaps... these were residual memories? Or maybe those memories were manifesting as a voice, a woman's voice. Still, it was awfully farfetched, yet at the same time it was an appealing thought. Not only did it mean he  _wasn't_ truly crazy, per se, but there was a reason for his supposed 'madness'. He wasn't sure where the advice had come from - after all, to his knowledge he didn't remember being a baby or having a child in his past life - but he didn't question it lest it disappear due to an understanding of its impossibility.

"You're not pulling - ouch! Quit it, you little - my leg?" he asked experimentally, muttering under his breath as he continued walking.

 _"Hell, why would I do that? I ain't stupid, honey. Trust me, boil or bake yourself a yam and share it with the baby, 'n he'll be right as rain. Damn, gotta teach you all sorts of stuff, don't I? You's the saddest lookin' replacement father God could've picked out."_ Kanda didn't need to be reminded. He huffed as he finally reached the end of the library. The same woman who'd helped him was sitting at the front desk, looking through half-moon spectacles at a massive sheaf of papers. She looked up when Kanda approached, and she asked, "Do you need any more help?" She paused a moment to look at Nthanda, who was still bawling. Kanda shifted the baby into a different position so to break her line of sight with him, and he stated, "I'm fine."

He began to walk out of the building, but a shouted "wait!" stopped him. He turned around slowly, afraid that maybe this was another apparition or figment of his imagination. The old lady hiked up her skirt in order to catch up to him, and she stated, "Do you have anywhere to stay?" Pride held his tongue - Nthanda, on the other hand, loosened it with a well-placed scream. He winced at the sheer volume Nthanda could achieve, and he rubbed his ear as he grumbled, "No, actually." The old woman almost smiled, a shadow of a grin creeping up on her wrinkled features, but she kept her composure.

"Well, I have many empty rooms in my house. After my husband died, all the children left for school and abroad, and so I have a lot of space. Would you mind staying? I could help you with the child, and perhaps you could explain how you came by him. I do apologize if I'm being presumptuous, but I do not believe you are the child's biological father," she said drily, and Kanda almost gave his usual response. Still, he kept his tone respectful, and he answered, "Sure. Why not?"

* * *

The house was a lot bigger than he'd anticipated. In fact, it was a borderline mansion built in the colonial style. He whistled as he bounced Nthanda in his arms. The kid finally gave up and went to sleep, whimpering every now and again. He'd been fussy for the past hour or so on the way to the woman's house, and he'd only managed to get the kid to sleep after feeding him a short snack of crushed crackers. Nthanda still squirmed in his arms, even in sleep, and Kanda wondered if this kid had to eat more than usual because of the parasitic Innocence buried in his chest.

The old woman walked past him and opened the door with a key around her neck, and she gestured for Kanda to follow him. He felt awkward walking into someone else's house. It felt an awful lot like trespassing, and Kanda had trespassed numerous times on accident. The results varied from the awkward to the downright dangerous. Nevertheless, he walked into the well-decorated house. Nthanda finally woke up and began to wail, and he absentmindedly shifted the kid so that he was leaning against his shoulder. The old lady who'd invited him inside walked straight into towards the kitchen, winding through a labyrinthine array of hallways. He glanced at the harsh portraits of past dames and their escorts.

"This house belonged to my ancestors in Bristol. Most of those paintings are from England, in fact. I don't believe you're familiar with the Leverrier family?" Kanda practically smashed into a side-table at the sound of that name, his blood freezing cold and solid in that one instance. He found himself tongue tied, but the old woman must've took it as stoic disinterest because she stated, "I'm not surprised if you haven't. We've thinned out over the years. For some reason, our children have such high mortality rates. It's a shame." She tittered as she quipped, "Perhaps it's because of all the inbreeding. We tend to marry within the family. Oh, dear, I'm rambling now. Ah, here we are, the kitchen."

The kitchen looked well stocked and well furnished. Kanda wouldn't know, of course. He hardly ever had to step inside of one. He stood off to the side, unsure of what exactly to do in this new environment, as he shifted Nthanda again while the little, underweight and underfed eight month old squirmed and grabbed.

"That little tyke bomb you have there is probably famished. I know just the thing to make," the old lady stated, and she walked out of the kitchen to a courtyard in the back. Kanda walked over to the window, and he sighed in annoyance as he watched the old lady dig through a massive sack yams.

 _"What'd I tell ya? Boil a yam, all ya gotta do. Even the old lady knows 'at,"_  the voice stated rather triumphantly, and Kanda answered back with much snark, "Probably because she's had twelve freaking kids of her own." The voice fell quiet, and Kanda felt a bit of panic at its absence, but he managed to suppress it. This was stupid. He didn't need a disembodied voice telling him what to do. He could figure things out on his own.

The old lady came back into the house with two yams, and she began to wash them in the sink.

"Would you be a dear and get me a pot of - oh, I forgot. You have the baby. Here, put him in that chair there. Yes, that one. Goodness, I haven't had to use a high chair in so long." Kanda took down a pot easily with one hand, filled it with water from a spigot outside, and came back in. As they boiled the yams, the old lady sat down at the table next to Nthanda, and she said, "I have some cereal, I think, in the cupboard there. For the meantime, that will keep him quiet. I don't believe he's had a proper meal since he's been born. Look at him, he's so skinny." Kanda almost winced at that statement. As a Parasitic wielder, his metabolism was practically at light speed. It was a wonder he hadn't died yet.

"Now, what is your name, young man?" she asked congenially, readjusting her half-moon spectacles across her thin nose. Kanda wondered if he could stay quiet, but...

"Kanda," he answered tersely, staring dead into her searching eyes. He wasn't one to be afraid of questions. The old lady nodded, and she stated, "My name is Ms. Ellis Leverier. I used to be Ms. Ellis Goldfield, but Mr. Goldfield has long since passed. Now, what are you doing in the middle of East London with a baby?"

Kanda was terse, using only the barest of details to tell her of the journey from Johannesburg to East London and the events thereafter. The old lady's face paled slightly, and she took a deep breath.

"Did you know about the Order?" Kanda asked seriously. "If you do, that means you know how deep you're in." Ellis wiped her glasses on her blouse, and she straightened in her seat. She smoothed back a strand of graying brown hair, and she stated, "Yes, I, uh, am familiar with the Order. Was a Central worker, actually, but I quit. I was only a pencil pusher, though, didn't see anything of too much importance other than bills and whatnot. I didn't work with Exorcists or the Science Department, but I do know the gist of what you're fighting." There was a heavy silence as the two stared at each other.

"This must mean that my house is in danger, doesn't it?" she asked rather seriously, and Kanda gave a nearly imperceptible nod. Nthanda chewed on crackers as Ellis did a few things around the house, and Kanda walked out side to look into the overgrown garden while keeping an eye out for any Akuma that may be around. Once the food was done, Ellis showed Kanda how to make baby food - a very easy process, it turned out, seeing as Nthanda was old enough for solids. Still, Kanda managed to ruin the first attempt by busting the entire yam on the floor, letting out a ribbon of rather colorful words soon after, but he got the second one right.

As Nthanda ate, Ellis said, "I think it'd be best if I got you two train tickets. If you're going to Cairo, you'll need to take one of the transcontinental railroads." Kanda looked up from feeding Nthanda. He frowned.

"Eager to get rid of us already?" he stated drily, and Ellis rolled her eyes. She muttered under her breath about young men and their sense of humor before answering, "It's not that I do not want you here. I'm an old woman. I don't have much else to live for. However, I know that child is probably very important, and it's best you get ahead of your enemies. No doubt, you've been overdue for another attack by now. Stay the night, we'll get you a ticket, and I'll turn in a form for reimbursement from the Church. I know my way around the pound." She mischievously rubbed her fingers together with a gleam in her eye before coughing into her hand.

"Anyhow, I will tell you any and all you need to know about babies and taking care of one while you are here. Heaven knows, you need the help," she said, muttering the last sentence with a pointed look to the ground. Kanda sighed out his nose in annoyance, but he didn't answer back. He merely continued to feed Nthanda with the miniature spoon Ellis had given him.

For the next five hours, he learned from her as well as he could. She taught him how to heat a bottle, how to make other foods from what was on hand, how to wash diapers (a task he found absolutely horrendous - there were very few things that could make Kanda gag, but this managed to beat all other disgusting activities by a landslide), how to change diapers (an equally horrendous task as the one stated previously), how to make sure Nthanda didn't suffocate in his sleep from rolling over, and how to swaddle a child with whatever cloth was around. The old woman found her patience pushed to its limit as he continually failed, and Kanda's own ability to put up with so much failure was wearing thin as well. He was used to getting things right on the first try, and this was just demeaning.

Exhausted, he sat down in a large armchair. Nthanda played on the floor with a blanket, gurgling as he tried to roll up in the blanket. Ellis' bun had come unraveled, pieces sticking in odd directions. She wiped her forehead, suffering in the florid heat of South Africa, though she would've thought that she'd have gotten used to it by now. Kanda himself found the heat almost unbearable. He was used to the northern climes of Europe and Asia, where the air was much cooler and drier. Even China was better than this humid, sticky atmosphere. Ellis looked down her aquiline nose to stare at Nthanda, who looked up at her with what seemed to be a melancholy look. She gave a weary little grin, and she stated, "He's an interesting one, but at the least he isn't fussy for no reason. I have had to mother ungodly babes before, and that, dear, is a tiring task to remain loving and endearing towards one's own offspring." Kanda raised an eyebrow at the use of 'dear' - terms of endearment were not usually used in the same sentence as his acknowledgement, but perhaps for her it was habit.

Nthanda began to crawl towards Kanda, and the Japanese Exorcist picked him up and set him back down on the blanket. The baby suddenly curled up and stared across the room, not moving. Kanda frowned, and Ellis blinked in surprise. Nthanda sat up and looked around a bit before staring off past them into a hallway. Ellis frowned, and she muttered, "Oh dear." Kanda looked at her in confusion.

"What?"

"His mother died some time ago, correct?" Kanda thought back. The date of death was on his dossier, but he couldn't remember very well when that had been. At most, he thought it was about two weeks.

"I'm not sure. Maybe a week or two ago. Why, is there something the matter with him?" Kanda asked. Great, another complication to add on top of all the other issues assailing him. Ellis walked over to Nthanda and picked him up, sitting him in her lap as she peered into his face. He didn't even look at her. The baby was being unresponsive to anything that Ellis did.

"... I have seen this before. Children are regularly separated from their mothers here. Their mothers either die or are arrested or they somehow manage to get lost and lose sight of Mummy Dearest. He misses his mother," Ellis said with a sad look. Nthanda squirmed away from her, and the old woman put the baby back onto the blanket. Nthanda curled up with his thumb in his mouth and continued to stare.

"What does that mean?" Kanda asked. All right, so he was separated from his mother. What was the big deal? He had someone to take care of him now, didn't he? What was the issue?

"He may not develop correctly without his mother, though I believe he will recover. You'll just have to take extra care of him. Be sure to play with him, talk to him, keep an eye on him. Babies can be just as depressed as adults. Human emotion is not privy to much change," Ellis explained, and Kanda chewed it over. He was suddenly worried. He couldn't provide all of that, along with protecting the kid, feeding him, clothing him, bathing him, making sure he was all right in the middle of the night. Suddenly feeling swamped, he got up and paced. He wasn't cut out for this. He'd accepted this challenge thinking that perhaps he could just  _poof_ and have the available resources and knowledge on hand via books and learning as he went, but he now realized that this was much more work than he'd anticipated.

"I wouldn't lose sleep over it, though. I'm sure you'll be fine."

 _"You'd better be. I may not be here physically, but I sure can try to whoop ass on anyone who doesn't take care of my baby."_ Kanda's head snapped up at the voice, which he hadn't heard all day. He resisted the urge to bark at the voice to shut up, knowing that such behavior probably would not bode well for the image he had made for himself in front of this old woman who somehow managed to be related to Malcolm Leverier.

"Dear? Is there something the matter?" Ellis asked, and Kanda shook his head.

"The wind. That's all."

* * *

Kanda woke up to the sound of crying. At first, he didn't understand where he was. It was very, very dark, and the bed he was in was not the one he was accustomed to. It was too soft and fluffed up with too many feathers and not enough firmness. It smelled odd, too, like a mix of old perfume and dead roses. Finally, the events of the day came back, and he slowly sat up. The crying he was hearing was Nthanda. It was a pitiful noise, like the keen of someone who'd lost a person they dearly loved. It hit him that this horrible crying was exactly that.

_Cinders and smoke, covering the entire area as he wandered about. Wailing in the air. Smell of death and decay. Lost his mother. Couldn't see her. Couldn't see sisters. Cackling in air. Screaming now, from his lungs. Laying there dead with her little body crushed. So young, so fragile. Fragments of memories. Loss, pain, hurt, wandering. No home for him. Home had disappeared with the gunfire and the sword he found in his grandfather's room._

Kanda nearly gasped by the vividness of the memory. For just a moment he could smell the smoke and bodies, the rubble and the rain. Mugen sat on his bed like an odd bedfellow, glistening, and Kanda wondered if that thing he had regarded as friend for so long might have been the reason he was here in the first place. Nthanda's wailing drew him out of his introspection, and he walked towards the crib that held his charge. He looked inside of the crib with a tired expression as Nthanda continued to cry.

 _"My poor baby... You know who I am now?"_ Kanda was too tired to censor his answer.

"I'm not an idiot. You're his mother."

_"Well... just to get it out of the way."_

The two of them stared in on the baby crying, one of them unseen and the other ravaged by so much time, terror, and age.

 _"Could you do me a favor? It ain't nothin', just somethin' small."_ Kanda wished he had something corporeal to look at so he could give her a withering glare. He only stared into the crib with a half-hearted attempt to appear peeved.

 _"Oh, come on! I'm a dead mother who wants to hold her child! Just pick him up and hold him for me, for the love ah God!"_ Kanda was shocked for a moment by the amount of distress and frustration he heard, but he guessed that was to be expected. He stood at the crib, deliberating whether he should do as she asked or not.

 _"I cain't stand to hear my baby wail like that. I can't... can't bear to know I cain't even hold 'im. You don't what that's like... I pray you never know what that's like."_ Kanda stared at Nthanda for a few moments, wondering if the baby could hear his mother's voice. It didn't seem like it, seeing as he was still wailing. Finally, he reached into the crib, picking Nthanda up by the armpits and cradling him against his shoulder. The little boy squirmed and scrambled to get away, fussing and crying before he became too tired to go on. Kanda held him for what seemed like an age, staring at the boy with the gold circle in his chest. Finally the kid started to fall asleep, breathing softly against shoulder.

Kanda looked down at the baby with a look akin to curiosity. The child was warm, so warm in fact that he felt as if he had a fever, yet his skin wasn't flushed. Of course, to him the feel of flesh against flesh was alien and strange, so perhaps this was normal. Absentmindedly he poked Nthanda's hand, and the baby gripped his finger instinctively. He felt a strange sensation of amusement as the baby hugged his finger, which was so large in comparison the rest of the infant. How was it that once he too was this small-

No. His face sobered. It was not he that had once been this small. The other person... that other man who he'd been had once been an infant no larger than a loaf of bread. Kanda himself had been bred in a tank and given an artificial life, one that was meant to be half-lived, preoccupied with fighting and training.

But that wasn't true, not really. He felt a twitch somewhere inside of him. As much as he liked to believe he was only a machine for fighting and generally making the lives of other Exorcists practically miserable, he did have other interests and hobbies, as much as common belief would hold that to be false. He loved watching birds, especially birds of prey, circle in the sky, and he liked the quiet. He liked gardens, and he was even interested in different forms of art (and after all, he was Tiedoll's student, and he was bound to get into art anyways). He wasn't just a machine.

Was he? When did he suddenly become his own person? After all, he was never anything like Lavi before he had come to the Order, who had been nothing more than a husk of a human being used as a receptacle for information when he first arrived. And yet, his only purpose had been to fight.

His struggle with this question was interrupted when Nthanda made a whimpering noise as he curled up against Kanda, grabbing a hold of his hair. He winced as the infant tugged gently in his sleep, and Kanda had to untangle his fingers from the intertwining strands. Tomorrow, he'd get a train ticket or travel with a caravan, and they'd be off for Johannesburg. From there, he could call the Order from a church. His golem had been smashed in the ensuing chaos the night before. He'd have to pick up Din, too. He'd need him to navigate.

Kanda sat down, thinking hard about what he was going to do the next day, and, hardly without knowing it, he slowly leaned back as his eyes began to droop. Even training had not been as arduous as taking care of a child full time. At least with training, one could end when they wanted. A child... not so much. He felt weary to his bones. His thoughts began to fade out as his eyes slipped closed until he was finally asleep in the armchair, arms instinctively cradling Nthanda as the little boy slept, and a ghostly lullaby hummed in the air as they drifted.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I am a new author, at least to AO3, and I appreciate feedback more than anything, even kudos. I like to know what you, as the reader, liked, didn't like, laughed at, wish hadn't happened, found as a plothole, cried about, etcetera etcetera, the list goes on. I'm going to put up a list of 'quality' questions just to get you started, but feel free to speak on any issue or aspect of the story that you want. It only matters that you tell me how you feel about it, and what I can do to make the story better. This story is prewritten, however, so most of your questions will be addressed to later chapters that have yet to be written out. 
> 
> In addition, I also like recognizing those people who've reviewed or subscribed to the story. However, I don't have to do that; in fact, I'm thinking of drawing a consensus from as many readers to see if this is actually a good idea or not. Go ahead and tell me your opinion!
> 
> Any how, God bless you all and happy reading!


	3. A Disaster Waiting To Happen

Early in the morning, the quartet stood at a train station on the very, very outskirts of town. It was a little known station in East London that few frequented but was now booming with business after the latest train bombing. Before the sun had risen, Ellis and Kanda picked up Din from the hospital. He wasn't fully healed, and they had been reluctant to allow him to leave, but after Din's objections to staying within the filthy, state-run hospital, they decided that he could make it on his own.

"It take much more to harm this man, oh yes suh, it does," the black Finder stated. He'd picked up his telephone from the front desk, which he'd had to remove from the shattered wreck of his car two nights before, and immediately called the Order. They had given them instructions that Kanda wasn't very happy to hear.

Allen was most definitely missing in America. Right after Kanda had come back from Asia on a visit to Zhu, Allen had gone off into the United States to clear out an infestation of Akuma, only to find himself suddenly embroiled in the conflict there between the Americans. He was lost somewhere, and they couldn't find him. He was the only one who knew how to handle the Ark correctly, and they didn't want to risk opening a door and accidentally break it somehow (though Komui said that it was more the Vatican's politics and red tape that had to do with the inability to receive a door than the lack of ability on part of the scientists working it). Kanda would have to find another Black Order based church, possibly in Johannesburg, where he could come back home, or at the least relieve Din with another Finder.

"You should be fine, I'm sure. I'm terribly sorry about this, Kanda. I really am. I didn't know -"

"Stop apologizing. It doesn't get any work done." With that, he'd hung up, and he'd asked Ellis for three tickets to Johannesburg. The faster the train, the better.

And so, here they were. The train had yet to come, and people were on edge. The train bombing still haunted many of the people at the station. No doubt, they were the same commuters who'd been at the last bombing, only to narrowly escape with their lives. Kanda himself felt slightly jittery, but that might be because of the strange dream he'd had the night before.

Kanda didn't have dreams, normally. Or, more accurately, he never remembered them. It was always a vague feeling in the morning, an aftertaste over the pallet of his mind. Last night, however, he had entertained the oddest sort of dream, one that had surpassed the events of the day before, enough to top the voice of a dead woman following him around and the strange situation he'd somehow managed in which to be caught.

He'd been at the top of a plateau, half-naked and almost completely stark white with dust. The sun was rising over the land beneath him, painting things with rich gold as the dark backdrop of the sky provided a contrast to the lightening features of the landscape. Nthanda had been bundled in his arms as his hair had whipped around his head while a fierce wind slashed away the land. He'd closed his eyes, and when he'd opened them again, he saw a dark troupe of men surrounding him. Their faces had been hidden, and they all chanted in low tones in a language he didn't understand. Nthanda's chest had glowed a bright gold as they chanted, and a fierce wind again ripped away that scene to show him the next - a lake spread out before him like a mirror, reflecting him as a ghostly white man covered in war paint with a sword strapped to his back and in his arms a dark babe crowned with a diadem and a scepter in his small hand. The lake rippled, a voice called - then suddenly, he'd been jarred awake by the sound of a car's horn blaring outside.

"The train should be here any minute now. I apologize if it's a bit crowded. Usually, this station is nearly empty by this time," Ellis explained, handing Nthanda back to Kanda. She tickled him, and the baby squirmed minimally, but otherwise showed no other outward signs. Ellis pursed her lips at his lack of reaction.

"This babe will have a harsh life ahead of him. Being separated from his mother so young - I don't think he'll ever fully recover," Ellis thought out loud, her face somber. She shook her head.

"Too many babies are separated from their mothers too early. He was lucky to be blessed by God with Innocence, or else he'd have stayed in an orphanage until he was twelve," she said, adjusting her glasses with small, precise hands. She looked up as she heard the sound of screeching wheels. Kanda looked down at Nthanda, the child very still with wide open eyes as he watched everything with a strange sort of observation. Kanda narrowed his eyes for a moment, but he said nothing to the comment Ellis had made.

"I will get our begs, suh. I handle it for you, you've got deh babe 'n all," Din said, picking up one of their suitcases with his good arm, but Kanda grabbed his own suitcase before the other man could reach for it with the same arm.

"I'm good. You'll injure yourself. Save it for later," Kanda stated tersely, watching for the train. Din stopped for a moment in confusion, not used to this sort of treatment, but he decided that this was a good thing and shrugged nonchalantly. His arm was held in a sling with a splint, as the hospital could afford no more than that for a poor black man with a broken arm, and he was careful to keep from jostling it. They all watched the train pull in, and Din headed towards it as it began to slow down.

"Ya'll be careful, now, on that train. Bad stuff kin happen on a train, if y'ain't careful. Robbers, tribesmen, that sorta thing," the voice said, and Kanda resisted the urge to answer it.

"I believe this is where we part ways. I hope you good travels. Do take these letters with you, if you would. They're for others in the Order. All you need to do is give them to the church in Johannesburg, and they will send them off for me. There's a dear. You have all the food you need? Nappies, bottles, snacks, blankets -"

"We've got everything, Grandma. You packed like we'd be leaving for weeks, not a few hours," Kanda stated drily, and Ellis raised one salt-and-pepper eyebrow, her eyes shrewd behind her half-moon spectacles. She shook her head, her bun practically stationary on her head as she moved, and she shooed them off.

"Go, go, don't linger here! You'll miss the train, you dolt," she stated in mock irritation, though a small smile hid on her face. Kanda grunted in assent, and he began to head towards the train -

Something he saw out of the corner of his eye sparked his mind into a lightning fast mode that seemed to make the world slow. He watched the flash with a mix of fascination, puzzlement, and familiarity when he suddenly realized what was going on, and faster than most humans were allowed to move, he grabbed Ellis around the waist and suddenly hauled her onto the train just as Din loaded his last bag. The black man's eyes widened as he was abruptly handed a rather plump, elderly woman, and Kanda dragged them all into the center of the train car down to the floor. Nthanda wailed, a maddening keening noise as if the world were to come to an end.

"GET DOWN!" he shouted, and the passengers stared in confusion until the sound of gunfire split the air into stripes of frightening noise. People screamed as they ducked down into their seats, bullets punching their way through the metal of the car. A few people very suddenly decomposed to dust in their seats, and Kanda cursed under his breath.

"Stay down," he growled to the two on the floor, and they didn't need to be told twice. Kanda contemplated leaving Nthanda with Din and Ellis, but he immediately nixed the idea, knowing that somehow they'd get separated and he'd be up a creek without a canoe. He made his way up to the front of the car, wondering why the train conductor hadn't already left. However, upon reaching the engine room he got his answer. A Level Three Akuma stared at the controls with a perplexed look, comically scratching the back of its armor plated head as it stared in vexation at the number of switches, levers, and buttons that dotted the control panel.

"The hell do I work this thing?" the Akuma muttered to itself gutturally. Nthanda suddenly let out a loud wail, and the Akuma whipped its head around with a glaring gaze. It immediately slashed at the air with one arm, and Kanda turned, his left side taking the brunt of the attack as his shoulders hunched around his charge in order to protect him. Kanda didn't waste a movement, and in one turn he slid around, using his momentum make a near complete revolution and draw his sword. The sword sliced a thin line diagonally across the armor of the Level Three, and it hissed as the Innocence made contact with the Dark Matter making up its armor. Kanda pushed forwards with his sword, cutting an 'X' deep into the Level Three, and it countered with a swift punch to the face. Kanda felt bones shatter in his cheek, but he managed to get in a single stabbing thrust into the shoulder of the Level Three.

Kanda flew into the back of the car, making a large dent. He hardly had time to register where he was before the Level Three followed up its punch with a deafening blast.

"What're you waiting for? GET UP! SAVE MY BABY, STUPID ASS! YOU GOT HIM HANGIN' ROUND YOUR NECK! DON'T JUST SIT THERE!"

Kanda dodged, Nthanda clinging to his chest. Suddenly, he was rethinking leaving Nthanda behind, especially with his mom yelling things in his ear and directions that he didn't need. Things were getting rough. Nthanda suddenly stopped crying, and things slowed down to the speed of molasses. Kanda watched as the Akuma slowly turned towards him, the laser it was using to cut holes into the wall following its gaze. Kanda realized he'd have to block rather than slide under because of the baby strapped to him, and he cursed himself mentally as he raised his sword to deflect it.

"SCREW YOU, EXORCIST!" the Level Three screeched as the beam was redirected into one of the control panels, and the entire thing sparked. They both stared at each other as the train suddenly started moving, and the Level Three started to laugh.

"Mission complete," it growled, but before it could disappear, Kanda stabbed his sword straight through its hand, twisting the sword as it screamed and driving the long, sharp piece of metal into its foot. Pinned, it wriggled and writhed to get off, throwing off shards of light as it bounced off its shiny outer layer, and it cursed him fervently. Kanda glared at it, giving it a swift quick to the head.

"What mission?" Kanda asked, and the Akuma spit oil onto the floor of the train. The corrosive substance sizzled as it hit the floor.

"What are you going to do? Kill me? I'm already dead. Heh, good try getting it out of -"

Suddenly, Nthanda squirmed towards the Akuma, and it attempted to lean away.

"The hell -? Get it away! EUGH! Humans! Infant humans! They're even worse than the normal kind!" Kanda frowned, trying to pull back the babe, but Nthanda was set on getting his small hands on the Akuma. Kanda finally shifted the baby to his hip where he couldn't go anywhere, and the baby wailed. Kanda felt his bones begin to reconstruct in his face, and he shoved the Akuma again. It screamed as the metal dug into its hands and foot, and it shrieked, "All right! ALL RIGHT! We're crashing the train, we're crashing the train! JUST KILL ME ALREADY!" Kanda was only too happy to oblige. He was careful not to get the baby bloody.

He walked back to the other cars, spattered and disgusting, with a baby leaned against one hip. Nthanda had stopped wailing, staring up at Kanda with a look that could've been annoyance. Kanda looked down at the infant that was almost glaring at him, and he rolled his eyes.

"Get used to it," Kanda stated. He was careful to step over the mounds of dust in the aisle, passing by stunned passengers and shell shocked train attendants. He handed Nthanda to Ellis almost absentmindedly, and the old woman took him with an astounded and frightened look. She swallowed as she held the child, realizing that she'd probably been inches away from Death, the figure standing next to her in that train station looking over her shoulder as Akuma had come and ripped through. She hated to think about the station they'd left behind, and she realized that they were now going quite fast on the tracks.

"What do we do now? The conductor's probably dead, and we can't contact Johannesburg. They don't know we're coming," she said, her voice sounding like it was far away, down a tunnel. Her ears rang, and her vision swam as Kanda shrugged.

"Hell if I know. Best idea's to stop the train. Of course, that damn Akuma shot up the control panel, so not much we can do there," Kanda answered, his tone clipped and no nonsense. He didn't usually have to think too much whenever he was fighting - it was all instinct and practiced coordination working together so that Kanda didn't have to spend precious seconds consciously thinking in the middle of battle. This, however, was different. They were fighting different enemies: what they didn't know and what they didn't think they could do. That involved some thought and creativity, two things Kanda sorely lacked in all honesty. He wasn't like Bookman Junior with his superior mind and his ability to reason and logic. Kanda had a layman's common sense to him, not the complicated, head-knowledge thought process that some of the other Exorcists possessed. Perhaps that was why Kanda was alive as long as he was. He generally chose the simplest answer, and he stuck with it.

"Dere be a lever, yanno, on the side, a big lever. It's deh brake for deh tren, 'n it should be workin' well or else someone gonna be screwed when we get to Johannesburg," Din stated seriously. Kanda indicated with his head, and they started for the engine of the train. Once there, though, they realized that the lever Din had been talking about was actually no more than a nub now. Kanda suppressed a wince. There was a clean slice all the way through the pipe that had once been the handle to the emergency break, and Kanda had more than likely made a careless swing and it'd been sliced off. Din lifted the heavy lever in his hand, weighing it as he muttered, "Dis bad, dis very, very bad, suh. Can't stop in Johannes, and we be dead within two hours, if we not smash into some oth' tren comin' dis way." Kanda tapped his sheath next to his leg, wondering what they could do. The landscape outside was passing by pretty fast, and one of the few gauges that worked happened to be a speedometer.

They were only going at about seventeen miles power, but they'd pick up speed as their momentum kept them going. Kanda looked into the engine of the train, realizing that they could actually starve the train of coal for a while, but that was a gamble on how long it'd take the train to come to a complete stop. They weren't going that fast...

"Get everybody off the train. We're going slow enough that if they jump now, it won't hurt too bad," Kanda stated. Din looked at the Japanese man skeptically, but he never the less went to the passenger cars to announce that they were going to have an emergency unload. Kanda thought about what the Akuma had said about their plans. It'd been a good plan, if it'd worked. Crash a train full of people. Get brownie points for leveling up. It was almost too easy. Still, the Akuma couldn't have thought that the train would just crash off the rails or smash into a building when it got to Johannesburg. There was only enough track, after all.

And then, Kanda realized what was going on. He looked at the train map and schedule in front of him. He traced the ideal route they'd have gone if the train had left on time, and then he looked at the Johannesburg map and schedule. At the moment, it was only eight forty five, if the clock inside of the engine had anything to say, so they'd left nearly an hour and a half early. There was supposed to be a delay because another train, the eight-ten train out of Johannesburg was using the same track. Kanda did some quick math in his head. It took nearly five hours for him to get from Johannesburg to East London. They were going at about twenty miles per hour now. He knew that they still had lots of time, but that meant lots of time to pick up momentum, and at some point the two would meet and neither would be able to stop in time once they saw each other coming.

Trees flashed past at a fast rate, and Kanda heard the sound of screaming as people jumped from the passenger cars to the ground outside. He winced as he heard a body smack a tree, and he figured some unlucky individual had just become very familiar with the plant life in South Africa. The answer to this problem should've been easy - get everyone off the train. Leave the train to crash into the other train. Walk all the way to Johannesburg. Yet, there was that inkling in him that wondered if he really was that low to let another train full of people die just because it would be inconvenient to save them.

He remembered a time when the other him had a choice like this. There had been a wagon stuck in a river, and his sister was in it (he had a sister? He'd never thought he had siblings) while another wagon also was mired and quickly sinking. Torn between the two, he remembered the panic and the indecision that had accosted him. That man had chosen to save his sister's wagon, the easier of the two with the most interest to him, and he'd watched as the people in the second wagon sank and suffocated as they were sucked into the mud. There'd been this feeling of guilt, one that Kanda didn't usually feel towards people he didn't know. He grumbled under his breath, and he stalled on the decision, forcing his way back into the passenger cars. A good number of them were already empty, and Din was helping one more lady out of the car. A man ran along side the train as fast as he could manage (which wasn't very fast), and Din shoved the woman out the door. She toppled the man waiting for her, and they fell on the ground in a heap, the train passing them by.

"Dere be two more, me and Missuz Ellis. Oh, 'n the babe, too. You kin stop the tren?" Din asked, the black man's face unusually somber. His splinted arm looked like it'd been broken over again, the way he was holding it, and Kanda looked away. He'd probably done that, but no matter. It'd probably saved the man's life. And the Finder probably knew it, too.

"Yeah. I can," Kanda stated tersely. Ellis suddenly appeared, and she said, "That's all the children and their mothers. That leaves the three of us and Nthanda. It'll be a long walk all the way to Johannesburg, and I don't think we'll make it for quite the long while, but we'll make it. I worry what it will do to the mothers and children, though the men look capable enough to carry them. Ellis shifted Nthanda, who was wailing again. She looked frazzled and out of sorts, not at all the prim and proper persona Kanda was used to seeing, though he'd only known her two days. Still, she exuded an air of command, and Kanda felt that it both grated on him and soothed him that someone else had an idea of what they were doing.

"Get off, and I'll stop the thing. It won't be pretty when it happens, though," Kanda stated. Din's eyes widened, and he began to usher a confused Ellis towards the exit of the train.

"What do you mean, won't be pretty? What are you planning to do? Kanda!" Din wrapped his arm around the old woman's waist, and he jumped to the ground with her in tow, Nthanda watching Kanda over her shoulder with large, doleful eyes.

"Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" Kanda didn't answer. He'd wait until they were farther away from the crowd. No use scaring the living shit out of them. No one wanted to see a guy with broken arms and legs regenerate. It was a messy and gruesome spectacle, and Nthanda had already had enough death and despair in the past few days.

"Why am I even doing this?" Kanda muttered to himself as he headed towards the front of the train. It made no sense to him that he was risking his life for someone else's. Maybe it was the fact that the people who were on the other train were just victims of circumstance. Maybe it was dredges of honor left over from his past life as a fighter. Maybe he was just being nice for once. Maybe he had gas. He didn't know.

He kicked open the door leading out of the engine room, and he stared at the fast moving ground below. Nothing he couldn't handle. He jumped and rolled, standing back up in one fluid motion. He watched the train begin to pass, and he started running. Before long, he was going faster than the train, passing the engine as he pumped his arms and legs. He could see ahead that there was a break in the trees, a long tract of just brown, flat land. That would be good for what he was planning. He ran faster, edging neck and neck with the very tip of the large, steam engine, and before long he was about fifty yards ahead of the train. He figured he'd need another one hundred yards of space, just in case, and he ran a bit longer before finding a good spot on the tracks.

He shook off his jitters, and he stepped onto the railroad tracks. Far, far, far down the track he could see small dots, the passengers, milling around, no doubt being bossed around by Ellis. He sighed, knowing that at least those passengers were in good hands, or at least wrinkled, experienced, old hands that smelled like too much soap. He watched the train come with a groan of resignation. He didn't want to do this. He hated regenerating when he didn't have to. There were so many other things he could be using that energy for, like... like butchering a hagfish, or beating up Akuma using toothpicks or something.

He leaned forwards, one foot in front of the other with his body turned to the side. His shoulder would take the brunt of the impact, and then the rest of him would stop the train. Hopefully. He wasn't entirely sure, but he knew that if he was wrong, he'd hurt a lot when he woke up, regardless of a healing factor or not.

The adage 'hit him like a train' never really registered too much to him. Now... it was a different story.

"Damn, you really are crazy."

The train slammed into him at a full twenty five miles per hour. Though the train itself was not going fast, it was a couple hundred tons of metal with enough momentum to shove over an elephant or two. Any normal human would've been thrown underneath the train tracks, chewed up in the wheels, and dead within a matter of minutes. Kanda, of course, was not a normal human. The wooden boards cracked and broke under his heels, the bones in his feet breaking with disgusting popping noises. He could hear his spine actually snap in half, his shoulder collapsing under the weight of the train. His legs lasted quite a bit longer, nearly an entire minute as the wheels of the train screeched against the force of the lone man attempting to stop this hulking machine. At long last, under great strain, his knees began to buckle, and his femurs split as both of his tibias began to fracture.

The train began to slow, and finally, at long last, Kanda fell to the side and blacked out.

Only to wake up several minutes later with a massive pain in his head, piercing agony in his thighs, a hot iron inside of his back, and an electrical wire running red hot through his shoulder. He could actually feel the bones beginning to knit themselves back together. Blood was being pumped out at a rapid rate through his system as the blood that had leaked from the broken blood vessels and veins was redirected and scrubbed out of his body. Voices reached his ears, and he opened his eyes to a blue sky. He groaned as he stood up on shaky legs, the bones in his legs still not fully reconstructed. He saw that there were holes in his pants and blood around the gaps, and he tried not to think too hard on what they were doing there.

"I see you made it out all right," a voice stated, and Kanda turned stiffly to look at Ellis. She stared at him with blatant amazement before staring at the train. Nthanda stared at him with a blatant stare that almost seemed to say with a cold, hard tone "I know everything, and I know what you are." He averted his eyes from the child to look at Ellis, who was staring at the train. Kanda himself turned back around, and he raised his eyebrows in a bit of surprise. Huh, the train really had come to a full stop only a couple of meters away from where he'd fallen away from the track.

"Yeah," Kanda answered in a far off tone. He looked back down the track, and he said, "Where's everyone else?" Ellis sighed, and she stated, "Well, some decided it'd be better just to walk back to town rather than try to make it to Johannesburg. It's too far for a lot of them, and it's faster just to walk back to East London. I myself am going to go with them." Kanda nodded, and he walked back towards the main group. He hoped that the train that was headed their way would have the sense to realize something was wrong when they see a train stopped on the tracks.

"How did you stop that train? I... I saw you stand there, and that was all. You fell away, and something strange happened..." Ellis said, her voice weak and wavering. Kanda didn't look at her.

"I stopped it. That's all," he stated with a matter of fact tone that brooked no argument. Even Ellis kept her nose out of it. She handed Nthanda back to Kanda, and the baby automatically wound his hands in the man's hair. Kanda winced as Nthanda pull on the strands, but at the same time it was strangely familiar by now to feel his hair wrapped around a pudgy hand. Kanda realized that all this time he'd managed to keep on his messenger bag full of baby products, and he opened it, finding a water bottle. He handed it to Nthanda, and the boy drank gratefully as he eyed the others around him with dark, piercing eyes.

"I'm going to keep going towards Johannesburg," Kanda stated. "It'll be days before another train can get from East London to Johannesburg. It'll be easier if I just run there. I'm a lot faster than a train." Ellis frowned, and she asked, "And what about Din?" Kanda looked over her head to the lone Finder standing out like a black speck in tan attire against the white gentry in their dresses and suits.

"He needs his rest anyways. I'll call when I get to Johannesburg. He can suck it up. He'll only slow me down," Kanda stated flatly, and Ellis raised an eyebrow.

"You don't know what tribe he's from, do you? He's from one of the little known tribes out in the Sahara, trained to be able to run for days at a time. He was hired by the Church after he left his tribe for a job in Johannesburg in order to help pay for his mother's medical bills. The doctors are horribly expensive," Ellis said, and Kanda gave her a look.

"How'd you learn all this?"

"He told me. We got to talking while you were off scouting the train station. You should really learn more about your work partners, dear, it does wonders," Ellis said with a slightly smug look on her face, and Kanda had the urge to retaliate, though he wasn't sure how. He decided to go with his usual response, a sharp 'tch', and he walked faster despite the pain in his legs.

"This was a disaster waiting to happen," he muttered under his breath as he finally caught up to Din. It was going to be a long day, walking.

"Din. Din! Where are you going? We're still going to Johannesburg, idiot!"

It turned out that Kanda and Din didn't have to run for long, though that was not to say that the run was not tiring, especially seeing as Nthanda was tied in a scarf slung across Kanda's chest. The train heading towards East London eventually headed towards them at around noon during the hottest part of the day. After seeing that there happened to be a very large obstacle on the tracks, the conductors decided to literally turn the train around by putting it in backwards after using a wiring panel to send a line down to the much more sophisticated Johannesburg station.

"How did the train stop? Is it still headed this way?" the conductor asked, and Kanda quickly answered before Din could say anything, "Emergency brake. It's stopped." Nthanda only watched the proceedings with his dark eyes, not even bothering to wail. He buried his face into Kanda's shirt as night began to fall over them. After nearly three hours of riding, they reached Johannesburg, but the streets were lively at night and both Din and Kanda felt nervous being in such a big, urban place with a young child so late at night.

"Deh babe..."

"Yeah, I know. We'll find a place to stay."

They managed to locate the church after a bit of difficulty, and a nice, passing prostitute actually pointed them the right way.

"It's nice 'n all to see a man with a babe nowadays. Can't find a good father, y'know? Jus' can't find good fathers, ain't worth it," the woman had said, cooing at Nthanda. She smoked her cigarette, and they went on their way. The church, however, was closed this time of night, and they were back right where they'd started.

"This is a problem," Kanda stated, shifting an uncomfortable Nthanda who started to cry. The stench of the streets was overpowering, and no doubt it bothered both the sensitive baby and the sense-heightened samurai. Din, however, didn't appear as fazed, and he stated, "Best be gettin' ourselves some room. Deh babe, ya change his diaper any? Gon' get diaper rash." Kanda's eye twitched. The ghostly voice that'd been following him around had nagged at him for the past five hours about feeding, changing, and watering the baby. He was getting sick of her constant needling, and he wished there was something corporeal for him to shove or intimidate. Still, it'd kept Nthanda from crying and screaming, so for that he was at least a bit grateful.

"I checked him an hour ago," Kanda stated wearily. He'd never felt this tired on a trip. He'd done lots of things in his life that should be more tiring than this, like hiking up a mountain with a massive pack on his back, fighting off Akuma every single hour, even walking straight through a river in the middle of the night to escape detection, and yet he was absolutely exhausted from taking care of this baby and walking around. His back hurt. His legs hurt. His feet hurt. All of him hurt. He just wanted to go home and go to bed.

"Check 'im again. Nevuh know, sometime they go 'n you don't figure it out til later. 'Specially not in this stink," Din stated, shoving a pile of manure gingerly with his shoe. Ah, so he could smell it. Kanda sniffed, irritated. His enhanced senses didn't appreciate the wall of disgusting that was assaulting his olfactory organs. Instinctively, he gently pressed Nthanda's face into his shirt, drawing the scarf over his head. Kanda looked down at the baby, and he realized that Nthanda had actually fallen asleep.

"Poor baby, all tuckered out. It ain't fair ya gotta be goin' crazy everywhere." Kanda felt like mentioning that the poor man holding the baby happened to be tuckered out, too, and he didn't see her giving him any sympathy or favors for carting him around, but he kept his tongue. It wouldn't do them any good, especially seeing as it would help if Din didn't think Kanda was actually crazy. Still, there was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind.

He remembered when he'd be left out in the rain as a kid... well, as a kid when he'd been his other self, before. He remembered being panicky and scared, but eventually finding somewhere to stay. That feeling still lingered like the bitter aftertaste of blood or coffee, and he shook off the remembered moment. He sighed, and he said, "Come on. We'll get there in the morning. We'll camp out at the door." Kanda sat down in the doorway of the church, leaned up against the door and the wall butting against the door. Din shrugged, taking up the same position opposite Kanda on the other side of the door.

After only a few moments, Kanda looked back over to Din. The man was already asleep, and Kanda felt a spur of envy that the man could so easily find rest. For Kanda, it was different. Most had no idea that Kanda spent entire nights awake sometimes. He was afraid of going to sleep a lot of the time. There were things in his mind that he left unconscious, making sure that they remained buried in his waking world, but when he slept... when he slept, it was as if they came alive and grew flesh and walked. He didn't ever remember them in the morning, but he remembered his body being tense and his mind unsettled. Those things scared him, because he didn't know what those unconscious things were. He hated those things he did not know, because they were a threat he could not attack as everything else that was physical and just here.

Kanda looked down in his lap, drawing his knees up to cradle Nthanda. The baby was asleep sounding, his face strangely smooth and innocent in sleep, so unlike the jaded face Kanda knew when the baby was awake. Kanda figured that if ever he had been a babe, his face would've looked as that, suspicious and distrustful despite its youth. Suddenly, he felt a strange sense of defensiveness for the babe. He never wanted anyone to go through the same hardship he himself had suffered. It was a strange sensation, but he knew it as clearly as he knew his name and his sword. It was a simple truth. It was just, he'd never been able to apply it to people, but here and now he had a life that he could actually influence and shape, if for just a small amount of time, possibly even change.

He stopped himself suddenly. What was he thinking? These alien thoughts... they suddenly perplexed him, though that simple truth continued to linger. Why was he thinking those things? What did it matter to him what happened to this child? He took a deep breath, leaning his head back and resting it against the stone of the church's alcove. The stars above were nearly blotted out by the city's bright streetlamps, and Kanda eyed the familiar constellations. As one of Tiedoll's students, he'd had to learn all the names of the constellations and their locations, if only from overhearing Tiedoll and Daisya chatter on about the stories that revolved around them as they revolved around the planet.

Slowly, he started to drift, watching streetcars go by and men with prostitutes on both arms and night workers and drunkards and lights flicker on and off, just watching life go on, only watching life go on without him as he realized that this was what happened every day and despite this, he'd never be a part of it, could never be a part of it as he was, so strange and foreign and inhuman and just plain wrong and against nature...

His mind rambled as he finally fell asleep, his introspective thoughts coming to a close as his eyes drooped and his body relaxed against the door of the church, where a stunned priest would find them and give them a blanket and leave them for a few hours before waking them, just for mercy's sake, as mercy was God's gift, oh yes, mercy was God's gift. Small mercies were God's gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next installment. I hope to upload all of them over the next couple of days when I have some free time. To get to the meat of the note: questions! 
> 
> I've decided to ask a few of them, just so I get a feel for how everyone likes the story and characters and what can be improved later. Do you think that Nthanda's character is evident despite his age? Is Kanda in character? What was something you liked about this chapter? How do you enjoy the prose? Is it too wordy, or could it be more flowery? Is it too fast paced? Tell me your favorite moment in the story so far. Do you think more canon characters are necessary?
> 
> And another note: I took liberties with the geography of South Africa. Johannesburg is MUCH farther away from East London. In fact, it's about a six hour ride, going fast (which they were not). I apologize.


	4. Bazaar In G Minor

It was a busy day in the marketplace. The heat pounded down from the African sun like a pestle on chilies in a mortar. It baked everything to a fine crust, even seeming to turn the people flaky, dry, and brittle. Despite their fragile appearance, however, these people barked out orders and prices, haggling and selling with a fine-tuned ear that could only come from years and years of practice. The marketplace was full of sounds and voices, from frying food to vendors hawking their wares, to young mothers shouting for their children who were laughing as they delighted in new toys.

Kanda waded through them all, trying to find a spot, any spot, to get out of the sun. However, shade was as precious as gold and silver. Every single patch of shade he saw was occupied by those smart people who'd come early to take those places they knew would shield them from the unforgiving rays of the sun.

"Kanda! Kanda, I got sohmethin' for yah!" Din shouted, making his way towards the Japanese Exorcist. They'd stayed nearly two weeks in Johannesburg. The church had let them stay in the spare rooms they kept for travelers who'd fallen on hard times or unfortunate circumstances. Both Din and Kanda had been told to wait with Nthanda in Johannesburg for the moment, and that special preparations were being made to move them up north to Cairo. They'd hoped to go by rail, but from what Kanda knew, the church probably had planned some sort of cheaper roundabout way of getting them to Egypt. He wasn't very enthusiastic about the thought of trekking across desert, jungle, and civil unrest, especially with a baby slung around his chest.

Speaking of the baby, he had grown accustomed to Kanda's presence. So much so, in fact, that Kanda no longer could put him down without the child wailing as if someone were trying to kill him. This posed a problem when Kanda needed to do such human things as go to the bathroom, eat, and bathe. Even in his sleep, Nthanda could tell when he was in Kanda's presence or not, and despite the child's sullen facial expression when held by the swordsman, being separated from him induced so much panic Kanda actually began to fear for the child's welfare.

"What is it?" Kanda asked. His voice was crisp and clear, though carrying a slight accent. Nthanda clung to Kanda's white button-up shirt, little hands wrapped in the white cloth. Kanda's face was bright against the white, clean shirt, and he looked much better than he had been. The three days of wear and tear had brought him down and tired him out to the point where he nearly slept the entire day away the first day at the church. He was in much better condition now, and he was slowly beginning to adjust to life in Africa, from the busy, crazy roads to the bizarre foods and hectic markets.

"Here, some sandvichehs, a cohple a' yams, mehbe sohme milk, a few tarts in there sohmewhere. How long we s'posed to wait here?" Din asked as he chewed on a ham and mayonnaise sandwich he'd picked up from the French vendor at the end of the road. Nthanda made gurgling noises, and Kanda shifted Nthanda to his other arm as he answered, "I don't know. They just told us to wait here today. They said they'd get here between three and four. It's four thirty already."  _Count on Central to be late,_ he thought to himself as he dug around in a satchel full of baby supplies that Ellis had given him before they'd parted ways. He pulled out a small, green-glass bottle of cold water he'd stuck in the ice chest overnight in the kitchen of the church. It was already melted all the way through. Kanda sighed. There had to be a better way to keep the water cold.

He'd received instructions, at last, to go the government buildings in Market Square and wait there for CROW members to meet him as an escort group up to Cairo. However, they'd been there for the past three hours, and Kanda had yet to see any CROW members at all. He sighed to himself, grumbling to himself. He was sick of this heat, he was sick of this trip, he was sick of carrying around this baby everywhere -

Suddenly, Nthanda looked up at him with a strange expression, one that Kanda could've equated with hurt if babies could hurt that way, and Kanda looked down him. The child's hands were clinging to his neck, and Nthanda withdraw his hands from Kanda. The swordsman hadn't even noticed the unnatural heat radiating off the child, he'd gotten so used to him, but now he felt strangely cold as the baby squirmed away from him.

"H-hey! Stop that!" Kanda shouted as Nthanda squirmed to get out of his arms. What was with him! First, he won't let go, and now he won't do anything but? Din caught Nthanda just as he'd gotten free of Kanda's hold, and the little dark baby clung to Din with a fervor that stunned Kanda. He suddenly felt strangely... like something was missing. It was as if a part of him had been removed. He'd become so accustomed the kid that without him hanging on his chest in the sling, it felt as if there was some extension of him cut off. It left him feeling oddly numbed, a limb that was cut off and then the stump frozen.

"Whoa! Here, li'l ohne. You so lively t'day, Nthanda, wha's a mattah witchu?" Din laughed as Nthanda looked over one dark shoulder to stare at Kanda with a dark expression. Kanda crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at the baby. He couldn't seriously be miffed about something could he? Could babies even get miffed?

They wandered the market, eating and searching for shade. At last, they managed to find an upper floor cafe with an awning that was currently unoccupied and had a sympathetic owner. Kanda overlooked the market with a sigh. It'd been an hour since the CROW should've arrived. He didn't know what had happened to them, but apparently it hadn't been good or else they wouldn't be late. Nthanda still gave Kanda the cold shoulder, and Kanda didn't mind. He could finally go and pee without standing there holding a baby off to the side.

After staying at the cafe for nearly another hour, the sun began to dip towards the western side. Kanda knew it was time to leave. The CROW weren't coming today. Something was going on. Maybe their train was delayed. He got up, leading Din and Nthanda down to the still-bustling market street. Vendors were still selling their wares - they'd continue until about thirty minutes before sundown. He heard the sound of small children laughing and playing as well as some flute music, and several children flashed past him in a blur of dark skin and pale reed toys. He watched them go with a look of peculiarity.

For just a moment, he'd felt something. It was a feeling of dejavu, a mere split second of something he remembered but had fled the minute he'd attempted to grasp it. He shook his head as if to dislodge the feeling. Still, it lingered, again that sensation of coffee or blood, a strong mental aftertaste that wouldn't fade or disappear.

"Heh, he likes deh moozihk, Kanda. Ent that just the strengest ting?" Din laughed, swaying back and forth with the music that a local instrument maker was playing. Nthanda seemed fascinated and enthralled by the sounds of the drum and the playing of the flute. Kanda glanced back and forth between Nthanda and the man with the instruments. He wondered... The child had never had a toy, as far as Kanda knew. Surely everything he'd had was destroyed when his entire building had fallen. Kanda himself had never held much stock in toys, but he did remember having one, a secret one, when he was in the Order.

It'd been a small thing, practically useless to him. He'd never kept it. It was a small fishing pole made of broken bamboo and a piece of spare string with a fish tied to the end of it. He'd hid that little toy. Only Alma was allowed to see it, because if he shared it with anyone else they'd either take it or break it. His world had been so small those first few months. It exploded as he got older, learned to read, realized that the toy was a childish thing that was no more than trash. But... he remembered that fondness for it.

On impulse, he walked over to the man with the instruments. Din frowned as he followed behind with Nthanda squirming in his arms and beginning to cry again out of spite and annoyance. The man looked up at Kanda with a look of surprise. He hadn't gotten a customer for the past hour, not so much a rarity in itself. Times were tough, and there were more important things to buy than these pretty noise makers, but it was what he was good at and he did it well.

Kanda pointed to small, portable drum. It was just the size for a toddler with chubby, clumsy hands to smack and hit and laugh at.

"How much?" Kanda asked in English, hoping that the man knew enough to understand him. He looked like a jungle man, the type that came down from the outer reaches of the wilderness to make a living in this different world of men in their suits and women in their pantaloons and hoop skirts. He adjusted his headdress, and he coughed into his fist in surprise.

He said something in a language Kanda didn't quite catch, but Din seemed to understand the gist better than Kanda did.

"He say that cost 'bout fifteen shilling, mehbe two more," Din said. He looked skeptical. The man was trying to get more of them than that drum was worth. It couldn't be more than ten shillings. Most definitely not a third of a pound! That was absurd!

And yet, Kanda paid it without further conflict or haggling. Din frowned, about to say something, but there was something in Kanda's eyes this time, something he wasn't quite sure how to place. It wasn't pity - no, Kanda had no room for pity or sorry feelings for another person's plight. It wasn't mere laziness, either - Kanda wasn't one to give up so easily if he was truly against it. No, what he saw in the other man's eyes was something like a mix of respect and familiarity.

Din was close. Kanda could recognize this man was struggling to keep his way of life without letting go of the fast moving world moving ahead of him. He was here, selling for these whites and their children as well as the poor black men and the few better off blacks as well. Yet, he managed to keep his heritage, here in his music, his trade, his home. He didn't give up his entirety to the world around him, saving something for himself. Kanda knew that he himself had given up his heritage at some point, let the white, Western world overtake him and swallow him up. It hadn't been in this life - he'd never known anything else but the European way of doing things. No, it had been in his last life, the one that followed him in a shadow, without definition and cast by the light of the life lived now. He'd been Japanese, that was true - in this life, though, he was almost purely a mix of European and Chinese cultures, swirled together until he couldn't tell where one started and the other left off.

So he decided it was only right to accept the other man's offer for fifteen shillings. Knowing this place, it'd keep him well stocked on food and transport for the next week or so, depending on the severity of the bombings, the unrest, and the willingness of others to do business. The man smiled, a toothy grin that was missing a few teeth, and looking all the funnier for it. Kanda felt something stir at that jack-o-lantern grin, something he hadn't expected. It wasn't pride. He knew pride too well. This was something much softer and warmer than pride. He'd felt it before - letting that girl touch his hair, saving Allen and Lavi when the two idiots got into a fix, helping Lenalee with her nightmares. He wasn't used to such a profound feeling from strangers.

The man handed Kanda the drum as Kanda handed over the shillings. They glinted in the fading sunlight, and Kanda straightened up, handing Nthanda the drum with an almost careless hand. Of course, nothing Kanda did was ever truly careless, and Nthanda caught the drum with a look of near-smugness at the fact he'd managed to catch the instrument. Kanda nearly let loose a small, shadowed smile. Nthanda banged away on the drum, holding it in one hand while he smashed his other hand into it.

And, for the first time since Kanda had taken the babe from the orphanage nearly a month ago, Nthanda laughed.

He found that he actually liked the sound. It was bubbly and filled the air with substance. Even with the rest of the market going on around them, he could hear Nthanda's high-pitched, little laugh like a gunshot on a cold, quiet night. Kanda took one long, spindly finger and tapped it against Nthanda's drum. Nthanda looked up in surprise, and Nthanda's face nearly went back to being the somber, miffed look he'd had half-the-day-long. However, the enticement of playing with another was too much to resist, and for every one of Kanda's thumps on the drum, he added two more sloppy, arrhythmic hits.

"He really like dat, y'know," Din said, handing Nthanda over to Kanda. At first, Kanda felt a pang of disappointment - he knew that Nthanda would squirm away. However, this time, Nthanda allowed himself to be transferred from man to man, and Kanda held him gingerly as if he'd disappear any moment. He felt oddly sick, as if this strange influx of emotions all at once were making him dizzy. He wasn't used to this sort of emotional turmoil. Everything was in black and white to him, and gray made his head spin.

They walked through the market place back towards the church as the sun began to set and the out-of-town vendors began to leave for the night. As they walked down the street, however, Kanda saw a drum, a much bigger version of the one Nthanda currently slept with in his sling. When they passed by, he gave a few almost playful raps to it, and suddenly he was grabbed by his wrist by a dark man.

He quelled the immediate reaction to punch the man, break his wrist, and take a fighting stance. The man didn't mean harm - his grip was too loose, his face too open, his grin too wide. He motioned to the drum, and he realized that the drum was a part of a band. Was this some sort of joke?

"Ha! Ya goht caught, Mistuh Kanda! They lohve seein' deh white man try 'n play deh drum while dey play. Go, go on. It not hurt anythin', 'n we not goin' nohwhere for 'while," Din said, shooing Kanda towards the band of men readying their instruments. Several of the street vendors and shoppers began to gather around in curiosity as to what the band was doing, and those that were experienced in the ways of the market place already knew what was going to happen and waited with much glee. Kanda found himself in the center of the spotlight, so to say, as the band struck up a tune, playing with several flutes, drums, and other instruments.

Kanda cautiously felt for a beat. Nthanda woke up at the sound of such concentrated noise, and he waved his arms towards the drum. Kanda's hands hovered over it curiously, almost tentatively as he tried to catch up with the rest of the sound that the band was putting out. Finally, he found a place to come in, and he made a hesitant rhythm on the drum. He began to actually play, then, feeling for the rhythm in the music the same way he found rhythm in a fight, using more than just his ears, but his body as well.

He found himself entranced by the music that was being played and the drumbeats he was turning into actual music. He was actually... enjoying himself? This thought threw him off beat, and the crowd groaned as Kanda quit playing all of a sudden. They'd actually been cheering on the man who was surprisingly good at playing the drum and following the beat, much better than the last white man, who'd just hammered at the drum willy-nilly without a thought to rhythm and cadence. Nthanda slapped the drum as the band quit, a single lone beat repeating over and over. The leader of the band smiled at the little boy playing with the drum, and he said in faintly accented English, "You're good, man. Never thought we'd find someone in a crowd who plays the drum like that. You're rough, but you know what you're doing." Kanda blinked. He hadn't expected anyone to comment on the drumming. This was a strange anomaly.

This entire  _day_ was an anomaly. He sighed to himself and muttered, "Thanks." The crowd began to disperse as the impromptu band looked for their next victim. Din hurried over with a wide grin on his face, and he said, "I din' know ya played deh drums." Kanda frowned as he looked back.

"That's the weird part - I don't play drums. I don't play anything at all." He remembered taking violin lessons for a while - until he'd gotten frustrated at the notes and broke the violin. The Chinese Science Branch decided that musical enrichment wasn't the best course of action and turned him to something more productive - sword fighting lessons.

That entire time, Nthanda had kept a hold of Kanda's hair or his neck, standing in his sling. He held his drum in his other arm as he hung on to Kanda with his free hand. Nthanda watched the band leave with a pang of sadness that only a baby could feel - a lingering, but not strong, feeling of loss that dissipated slowly. He liked those drums. He really had. Nthanda felt tired, suddenly, and he settled back against Kanda's chest in his sling, making himself comfortable as he curled himself around his drum. Kanda patted the bundle that was falling asleep at his chest, and they began, once more, towards the church.

"Wait! WAIT! KANDA, DIN!" The two spun around, one with his hand on his sword hilt and the other with a hand over his knife on his belt. They realized that there was nothing to fear when, out of the crowd, Ellis trotted with a red and puffed face from running in pantaloons and several layers of skirt. They walked towards her quickly as she leaned against a pole to catch her breath.

"What are you doing here?" Kanda asked in confusion. She was supposed to be back in East London. Why did she -

"I'm... here to... help as an... escort... CROW members were... delayed by a bombing... two dead, one still alive. She's on her way here right now, and she's somewhere in the marketplace. Central contacted me, and they told me - " Her face blanched, and she licked her lips as she weighed her words carefully.

"- to help you at all costs. I'm the only other Central member in this nick of the woods, so I decided I'd better do my part," she said, and Kanda could tell she wasn't giving them the entire truth. However, she also looked like she was about to have a heartattack right there on the steps of the government plaza, so he let it go. He'd get the truth eventually.

"Is that why they were late?" Kanda wondered to himself, and Ellis rolled her eyes. She gave him a playful snap to the head with her hand, and she stated, "Yes, my dear bunglehead,  _that_ is the reason they are late." Kanda found himself surprised at the soft hit to the head. That woman had guts. If anyone else had done that, he would've probably shoved them over, but seeing as Ellis was an old woman... He shook his head infinitesimally. He'd never cared about age when it came to that sort of thing. What was going on with him?

"Where are you staying?" Ellis asked, brushing back a strand of graying brown hair. She adjusted her glasses on her lined face, surveying the two men. They looked fairly cleaned up, if a bit rumpled. Nthanda looked much healthier now. He was much plumper than he'd been when Kanda had first picked him up, and his skin was a shiny dark ebony, so dark he was almost a pure black. The circle in the middle of his chest glinted in the light of the setting sun, turning the burnished metal into a reddened gold color. It winked at her as Kanda turned to look over his shoulder at something that had caught his attention.

And suddenly, Kanda had caught a harpoon, the tip only three inches from Ellis' nose. She stood there, completely in shock, for a few moments as Kanda ripped the barbed rod from his hand. The flesh steamed and slowly, right before her eyes, grew right back into place as if nothing had happened.

Ellis put a hand over her heart as she backed up, realizing what was happening. She grabbed Din, and she began to drag him underneath an alcove as people began to scream.

"Akuma?" Din breathed.

"What else?" Ellis grumbled sarcastically. "Unless you know some stranger who enjoys shooting harpoons into crowds at random." They watched and waited, their eyes anxious as several people screamed in pain. One of the men from the band leaned against a wall with a steaming harpoon in his arm. Kanda, amidst all the chaos, stared up at the sky with a nonchalant gaze as if this were an unexpected rain rather than poisoned harpoons. Faster than they could see, his sword sliced straight through a harpoon headed towards two people behind him. Each of the separate pieces made their own way into the ground around the three people, the two behind Kanda cowering as they ran for cover.

An Akuma hovered over one of the buildings, wielding a massive harpoon gun. Kanda sighed to himself. He hated the ones that had big ammunition. At least there weren't -

RATATATATATATATATATATATATATA-

-machine guns.

He hated machine guns. Machine guns  _hurt._ It was like being stung by bees a thousand times over in quick succession. It was  _survivable_ (at least, in Kanda's case), but he preferred not having to deal with them. The Akuma screeched its maniacal glee, and Kanda groaned. He hated the ones that laughed and screamed the entire time. Only Level Ones were quiet enough for him, even if they had Gatlings attached to them.

He climbed a building with ease, and Nthanda woke up in confusion. The baby started to grumble, almost, making noises of annoyance at having his nap suddenly interrupted. The baby poked his head out, and Kanda quickly pushed the baby's head back into its sling as a bullet ripped a hole in the flesh where it had just been previously. Kanda grunted as the impact sliced through several organs, but it wasn't long before the long bullet forced its way back out. He deflected the rest of the bullets with intense precision, keeping the Akuma busy. It was rare to only find one, but then again, this Level Two could've eaten the other Akuma in the area in order to keep the humans to itself.

Finally, at last, Kanda managed to get near enough to give a good slice towards the Akuma, but it blocked with the harpoon gun, giving another barrage of shots. It was very tall, with spindly legs and a pack of harpoons on its back. The machine gun was attached to its wrist, thicker than the entirety of the arm. Its face was that of a lizard, long teeth and dry eyes that stared. Its mask was on the back of its head. Kanda suddenly wondered who this person would've been if they'd never been turned into an Akuma by the person they'd called back to the world of the living. He knew that Allen could see the souls -

Suddenly, Kanda was shoved backwards by another hail of bullets. His mind had been too occupied. He looked down, making sure the baby was safe. Nthanda was more than safe. The kid was leaning up out of his sling, refusing to say still. Miraculously, the baby hadn't been touched by the bullets.

"Stay down," Kanda growled, though it was more an action of habit than any actual merit. The baby couldn't understand him -

Nthanda, who had been holding on to Kanda's hair, ducked back inside the sling. Kanda blinked... and then he began circling the monster that was waiting for him.

"Exxxxorccisssssst," it breathed, drooling on the tiles of the roof below it. The two accessed each other before the fight really began in earnest.

Kanda ducked underneath another barrage of ammunition, racing forwards as the monster was occupied with shooting at him. He brought his sword underneath himself to the side, aiming a long, upwards slash at the gun. The end of the gun fell away, and Kanda thought he had victory, just another slash, another slash towards the head to finish it off -

Kanda suddenly found himself with a harpoon aimed at his chest where Nthanda was bundled, and his eyes widened. A flash of sudden and deliberate fear overtook him, one he had not been prepared for. As if at a standstill, they remained for all of two seconds, the impasse growing in gravity within Kanda's mind as he realized that, though he would live, Nthanda would most certainly die once the harpoon was sent out of that gun. It would pierce through his small body, ending his life in mere seconds.

He had no choice. It would happen in seconds. His mind blurred for an alternative, but he couldn't move away - could he? He could forgo victory, let it get away at the gain of keeping Nthanda... or he could take out this menace, leaving the child to die.

And then the world, all of a sudden, changed in a blur.

Kanda's eyes widened as he realized he was in a strange world of cold, dark blankness. The world had shrunk to a pinpoint of light in a second, and he was now only in a strange, other place, a place he knew he shouldn't occupy, one he knew in his very  _being_ that was impossible and not of his nature. He shivered as he watched things pass him by - impossible things, things like flying machines, massive mushroom clouds sprouting from a decimated ruin, strange devices and inventions, all sorts of things. And then, he saw things from before, things he knew no one could comprehend. He saw a strange race, a race of humans that looked so different yet were the same as the present day people walking the streets. They were dressed strangely, and they talked strangely, but the instances were short.

And then, like a clap of thunder in his ear, he was back in the world he knew. Except, instead of being in front of an Akuma aiming a harpoon at him, he was in the middle of the street with Nthanda and his little hands wound in a strand of his hair. His shock didn't have a chance to live long as he realized he was still in a battle - a battle for Nthanda's life more than his own, but he had a feeling that perhaps Nthanda was not so helpless.

"First Illusion: Ningen." An army of insects suddenly sprouted from the air, ghostly prawn-like locusts that were willing to eat an entire field of Akuma down to nothing. They raced after the Akuma aiming its harpoon at them, breaking off bits and pieces. Kanda watched for several moments before, suddenly, he was lanced through the shoulder by a harpoon. It was fighting off the Hell Insects! This thing didn't give up easy.

A brilliant bright band encased the middle of the Akuma, and it stood at a standstill, trapped. It screeched in horror as it realized it was being restrained and tightened. Kanda took the moment to climb up the side of the building in a few bounds, giving a devastating slash. It fell with a great crash through a stall, the people below screaming as steaming pieces fell on them. Kanda watched the mayhem with the usual detachment, one hand instinctively holding Nthanda towards his chest. He glared at the pieces of Akuma that would've taken him from him -

Kanda was rocked by the realization that he had actually worried, no  _panicked,_ when he'd been faced with the realization that he could've accidentally killed Nthanda if... if that... whatever  _that_ was... hadn't happened. He had to be more careful. This was his charge - had to take care of it. For... for duty. Only for duty. It would be... dishonorable to let him die. Still, he knew that wasn't all of it.

Now, who was it that had trapped that Akuma? Had Din been holding out on him? Keeping talismans somehow without telling him? Either way, he didn't care as long as he used those things well, but that hadn't looked like any talisman light to him. In fact -

Gah! He was so stupid! He'd know those lights anywhere. Scattered around his feet, he watched spell tags flutter.

CROW.

"It's about time you got here," Kanda said, turning around as the last light of day flashed over his face in a reddish glow, making him look bloodied and tired. In fact, much of him was already covered with Akuma oil. His face was splattered, along with his shirt and sling and pants. It'd be a bugger trying to get it all out.

From the shadows, a dark scarlet robed figure stepped out. The robes were long, ending towards the knees, and the pants held half the design of the CROW emblem, a gold double diamond. He wore a turban of blood red, the emblem on the top as well, with a veil over the face. The hair was bound back, completely hidden in the turban, and Kanda suddenly frowned. This CROW member was awfully short, almost half his height practically. The dying light of the day spluttered out like a candle, flashing over the bandages over the tunic-like, sleeveless scarlet robe. The CROW member took off the veil, revealing a young woman's face. He was taken aback a bit, but maybe he shouldn't have been. The CROW had men and women alike - just, there were usually more men than women. She must've been the only one to survive.

"Name?" he asked.

"Vanya," she said, just as taciturn. In the dark, he couldn't really see her face. The voice was deep, an alto voice that could've easily been mistaken for a boy's, albeit a young boy's. He nodded, but then he realized that she couldn't see his face - or, at least he didn't think so.

"Name?" she asked, also.

"Kanda."

"Good."

With that, as if on cue, the both of them began to leave, and Kanda felt the day slowly settle on him like falling debris in water, filtering to the bottom and slowly piling up. He could feel the stress beginning to pound on him, but he knew that with enough meditation, he'd be able to clear it all away and categorize the events of the day into neat piles. Still, he couldn't help but feel strangely detached from every event that had happened, yet at the same time still in the present. He protectively held Nthanda, despite the fact the baby was already settled in his sling. His arms were tight around the baby, subconsciously making sure that Nthanda was in one piece, breathing, abnormally warm as usual.

The gas lights came on as the two of them climbed off the building. The damage to the street wasn't bad - there were a few stalls knocked over, some broken pots, a few bent light poles. Ellis and Din revealed themselves from under the alcove they'd hidden in, and they watched the CROW with wariness. Din rubbed the back of his head, looking away from the scarlet-robed figure, and Ellis fidgeted as they headed towards the two.

"We'll leave to a safehouse. Let's go," Vay said, and Kanda felt a part of him bristle. He was the one who made the decisions. What gave her the right to just tell them what to do? He settled the feeling down - technically, she was in a different jurisdiction, so it was hard to say who was over who in terms of rank. The assumption of power, however, still nagged at him like a hangnail.

They walked down the avenue, shadows of the things they'd done still playing amid the dark spots under the street lamps, always at the back of their minds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another chapter, yet another day. Sorry I was so late on the upload. 
> 
> Again, critiques would be nice, especially some really in depth ones. I absolutely love feedback, so it'd be great if you could get back to me on that. Just questions to get you started...
> 
> What characters do you like best? Are the OCs tedious? Or are they fun to read? What about the canon characters? I know there's only one. Is that also tedious? Do you think he's in character? Who or what would you like to see more of? Are there major tweaks that need making?
> 
> I'd love to hear from you! God bless you and keep reading!


	5. Fire and Snakes, Fever and Jackals

Kanda nodded off again, but he managed to jolt himself awake before his head hit the table. He'd been up for nearly twenty-four hours. It was difficult to stay up for so long, even for someone like Kanda whose stamina almost never seemed to flag. The Exorcist stood up, stretching his long legs. He walked towards the small, makeshift crib they'd made for Nthanda. One good thing about that CROW was that she had a knack for resourcefulness. Vanya had volunteered to help Kanda with keeping watch over Nthanda, but Kanda had decided otherwise. He had always held a rather subconscious aversion towards the CROW faction of Central. It didn't help that they'd been dispatched to kill him when he was young, a memory he'd much rather try to forget. Right now, she was his guide and partner, alongside Ellis and Din.

Though, if anyone asked Kanda, this party had grown about three too large already. He couldn't say that he wasn't grateful for their help now and again, of course. Give credit where credit is due. They had managed to stay alive this long, and that was a feat within itself. Finders had a lifespan of nearly five years, maybe a little bit shorter than that, and according to Din, he'd been in the Finders' group for nearly seven. Ellis had never been in an Akuma attack before, and Kanda had thought that, all things considered, she'd done pretty well. At the least, she didn't run off screaming like a silly, bleating goat-nag.

Kanda peered into the crib, which was more like a basket lined with several layers of sheets and a mesh of chicken wire over it to keep Nthanda from crawling out. The little, dark baby practically blended in with the darkness within the basket. The gold circle in the middle of his chest caught the light, winking at Kanda as he felt the baby's forehead. It was extremely warm, much more than his usual temperature. In a stark contrast with his usual sleeping habits, Nthanda was incredibly still now, and Kanda felt a moment of unease. It was too close to the stillness of death for Kanda to feel comfortable. He didn't like that the baby was so unresponsive or inactive, but he tried to keep his worry under the radar. He couldn't be too attached - that last fight in the marketplace had shown Kanda just how fragile his life could be. One bullet would be more than enough to bleed that little body out until it was a husk.

The thought sent a shiver down Kanda's spine. Even he couldn't stomach the death of someone so young. He peeled back the mesh on the basket, and he lifted Nthanda out of the impromptu crib. The spirit of his mother had been going nuts in his ear these past couple of hours, and that had helped him to stay awake and check on the baby every fifteen minutes or so. Even now, she was jabbering into his ear. He ignored her, as always, and held the baby in the crook of his arm. At least if he was going to fall asleep, he'd have Nthanda closer than a few feet away. He could feel Nthanda's frantically fast heartbeat pulsing against his chest as he sat down and laid the baby against him.

They were in a safehouse. It was small, close, and probably not all that sanitary, but it was the only place that might be fortified enough to keep them from being turned into Swiss cheese if Akuma attacked in the night. The Church had agreed to pay for it rather than let them use the traveler's rooms in the Johannesburg cathedral. They were already moved to the outskirts of the city in order to catch the next train to another depot out along the fringes of South Africa. He made a mental note to go and find a map of the area before they left in the next day or so when the trains finally begin running again. Another bombing had destroyed part of the route from Johannesburg to the outlying depot, delaying departures and arrivals by a good two days. Nevertheless, Kanda would not be remiss to be out of this poor, stinking city with its poverty and its aristocracy. Europeans - feh.

The door creaked open, and Kanda looked up. Fighter's instinct told him to immediately grab Mugen from the side of the chair, and though he saw that it was only Vanya, the CROW that had been sent as an escort, he still felt wary. She seemed a little too emotional for a CROW. She was quiet, unassuming, but also strangely kind, a characteristic Kanda had not thought a CROW could possibly possess. She'd already made toys for some of the children on their street, and she seemed to attract them without even meaning to. However, he had also seen firsthand her ability to handle herself in a tense situation.

That poor pickpocket. He'd probably pissed himself when she'd backed him up against a wall and pressed a knife under his ear. Kanda wasn't impressed, but the pickpocket had learned his lesson. Kanda had seen a small, slim knife in the man's hand, but he immediately dropped it after being confronted with the likes of the Eastern European CROW.

Along with that ruthlessness, he'd sensed a sort of sadist tendency within her. He'd watched her mercilessly pick the legs off of spiders when bored, or stomp out the lives of the bugs around her when anxious or restless. He'd watched her pin certain bugs to a cork board she kept in a case, watching intently as they twitched and scrambled. Her words were usually terse and clipped, and, to him, she seemed unpredictable. CROW had a neat little pigeonhole in Kanda's mind. Not only was she a CROW, she did not fit what he knew of them, and that made him wary.

Kanda shook his head, trying to stay awake. He looked down at Nthanda, reminiscing over the brief feeling of panic he'd felt after realizing that his little charge had turned a dark, dark color and begun to breath shallowly. As they'd walked back towards the cathedral, the babe had begun a fever before becoming restless. Afterwards, he'd become very still.

It was the fighting. Either I tired him out during the fight, or he tired himself out after...whatever it was that had happened, Kanda monologued internally as he stared at the ceiling. He finally looked down towards the spot of moonlight spilling through the window. That moment in time where he'd been somewhere and nowhere at the same time... it had been such a bizarre experience. There was no way to actually describe it. He closed his eyes, picturing the vivid images he'd witnessed in that strange nowhere.

Come to think of it, Vanya had been awfully interested in the incident as well. She'd asked several questions on the way from the cathedral to the hotel, most pertaining to what he'd seen and how it had happened. Now that he thought about it, she had seemed a little bit too interested. Then again, he could be paranoid, but he doubted it.

He looked down at the baby. Lately, he'd had the sneaking suspicion that, despite what the Science Department thought, Nthanda's Innocence was far more active than they'd originally thought. He'd been noticing something odd, but he'd kept the idea to himself. Kanda wasn't a very talkative person to begin with, and this wasn't something he'd like to just throw out of nowhere.

Kanda had the idea that Nthanda's Innocence must work by skin contact. The child had more than once seemed to 'pick up' on emotions and thoughts Kanda had, usually while tugging on his hair. They had been touching when that strange incident happened on the rooftop. The Akuma he'd fought nearly two weeks ago and shied from Nthanda's touch as if he could cause death with a fingertip. Kanda shook his head. He sighed to himself. He must be crazy.

Nthanda suddenly began to stir, and Kanda felt the oddest thrill. It was a ripple of relief that the child was at the least active and alive, and he attributed it to human instinct to see to the survival of their race. The babe attempted to stand on his chest, but his little legs were too weak to hold him up. Kanda walked back towards the crib, and Nthanda began to cry. Kanda stood, lost for a moment. What did he do? The kid just suddenly started to cry, and he couldn't get him to stop...

"He vants to be held," a thick-accented voice stated. Kanda looked over to the voice, unsurprised to find Vanya standing near the window. Her white face was nearly blue in the moonlight, and he was struck by how ghostly she appeared. Still, true to his nature, he didn't show his unease. He merely stood there, Nthanda screaming in his arms.

"Tch," Kanda snorted derisively, but he walked back to his chair. Nthanda began to calm down the minute he'd sat, and Vanya approached slowly. She blinked her eyes slowly, and Kanda couldn't help but notice the tension in the room with the CROW present. She was... not an enemy, but not a friend. She had not yet gained either his respect or his trust. It would be especially hard for her considering she was one of Central's cronies.

It was quiet as Kanda sat in the chair, his eyes diverted to the floor. Despite the fact his eyes were never on the CROW, he was always aware of where she was, his ears twitching as she walked across the room. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise the nearer she approached, and he felt like he had to restrain a growl as she picked something up from the table next to him. It was as if they were two large dogs sharing the same space, and the both of them were a little too close for comfort.

"Jyou do not like me," Vanya stated. It wasn't a question. Kanda stared at her, and their eyes locked together like the pieces of a jagged puzzle that didn't fit quite right. The friction was nearly palpable.

"No. I don't," Kanda ground out between his teeth. "Stay out of my way, and we won't have problems." Nthanda wailed, and Kanda winced as the sound thrummed his eardrums. Vanya shifted her weight nearer to Kanda as if to act, and Kanda stood up. He was practically double her height, yet in presence they both seemed to exhude the same amount of animosity.

"Stay out of my way... and we will not have problems," he reiterated, punctuating each statement. The two of them stood like that for several moments, Nthanda continuing to scream. Kanda finally broke the tension as Nthanda's screams reached a higher pitch by carrying him to a nearby table and setting the baby down. He felt the baby, noting just how feverish he'd gotten. He must be uncomfortable, but he wasn't sure what to do now. He rubbed his temples, trying to think through the massive amount of noise the baby was putting out.

What did you do for a fever? He couldn't get the kid to eat anything - he'd been asleep this entire time, and he doubted he could get him to take a pill or eat a bite of anything. He couldn't put him back in the crib. He was too afraid that if he left him as he was, he'd only get worse. That blasted screaming! Hellfire, he was loud!

Ellis suddenly entered in a bluster, her nightrobe wrapped around herself like a shifting ribbon of cloth.

"What do you think you're doing, young man? Why haven't you -"

"Because I'm trying to figure out what to do, that's why, you old bag. Go back to sleep."

"How in heaven's name am I going to sleep when this baby is sounding Judgement Day!" Kanda finally turned around and took a threatening step towards the old woman, and Ellis took a step back in surprise. Realizing she'd flinched, Ellis faltered. Kanda was breathing hard, obviously frustrated and tired. She swallowed audibly, having seen firsthand how brutal and violent he could become if the right trigger was pushed.

"Haf jyou tried singing?"

The words took them both offguard. The words were quiet underneath Nthanda's incessant wailing, but they were projected well enough that it cut through the noise easily as a boat's prow through calm water. She walked towards Kanda, and again the image of two dogs bristling was brought to mind. Ellis could taste the antagonism radiated by the two. Vanya was a CROW - she knew Kanda's past, most likely. Kanda was a Second Exorcist - CROW were less than his best buddies.

If Kanda had anything to say, CROW were less than filth.

"All jyou hef dohn iss hold him end yaell at old vimen. Try to sing to him, and he vill quiet. If not, he iss hungry or he vants to be held, or he iss very hot end needs a cool cloth. Zat iss almost all bebies need," she stated. Kanda felt the paranoia rise, but he wasn't sure why. He remembered the last time he'd chosen to trust someone - Lavi had ended up getting him stuck in a dumpster. The time before that Allen nearly took off his head. The time before that he'd trusted Alma -

Almost by instinct, he circumvented the subject.

"Vell? If jyou von't, I vill," Vanya stated, her voice strangely flat. There was no inflection, no hint of anger or rage or frustration. Kanda was cold, but Vanya seemed empty.

Nevertheless, the CROW picked up Nthanda, and she placed him in the crook of her arm. She stood near the window, leaving Ellis and Kanda to stand near the table and watch.

"Kanda, you can't keep butting heads with her," Ellis muttered, looking up at him. Her eyes were still a bright, and her voice was brittle with indignation. She didn't appreciate being disrespected, but Kanda didn't really care.

"The hell I can," Kanda mumbled, crossing his arms. The CROW was rocking from side to side, a note or two wafting away towards the two of them every time she moved her head back towards them when she rocked backwards. She looked back every now and again, wary of the volatile Exorcist behind her. Despite the fact both knew that it was unlikely there would ever be an actual fight within an enclosed space, both were as tense as predators prowling within close proximity to each other.

Ellis shook her head, and she stated, "You'd both had better get your act straight. The African wilderness doesn't leave room for distrust. The minute the both of you are at your necks, the wilds will take you." Kanda stared at Vanya, glaring at the back of her head, and Ellis finally gave up on attempting to talk to him. She toddled back out of the room, muttering under her breath about hot-blooded men and their tendency of stopping their ears to good judgment.

"She's right, you know," Nthanda's mother mumbled, and Kanda wished, for the umpteenth time, that he had a corporeal body to maim. The world was against him some days, he guessed.

He sat down in his chair with a grunt, deciding it wasn't worth it to try and fight Vanya for the baby. He was quiet besides, and that was all Kanda cared about. As long as the kid stayed asleep, he was happy. That meant he could actually get some shut-eye.

However, Kanda couldn't seem to find slumber. It eluded him like a silvery fish between his fingers, here at one point and gone the next. Vanya's low humming kept him awake, and he finally gave up with a massive sigh. He looked over at Vanya, studying her. She was standing sideways, the light throwing her face into stark relief.

She had a long, high-bridged nose that ended in a flat point. Her eyes were a strange color, a dark brown color that was reminiscent of old blood. Her lips were thin, but not to the point of being nonexistent. She had a high forehead and a dark, almost sullen brow. Her hair was cropped short and held back with a myriad of pins into a crown of small braids. She looked familiar, as if he'd seen her before in a half-remembered dream.

And then, suddenly, the scene seemed to freeze and focus, everything becoming crystal clear.

She was standing there. Despite the fact that Kanda knew it was Vanya next to the window with Nthanda bundled in her arms, he saw her. For that moment, it was as if the world had been thrown off kilter, and everything had shifted over. Kanda didn't feel like Kanda - he was someone else all of a sudden, with different moods, a different personality, different everything. Yet, at the same time, he was still his belligerent, moody, foul self. Nevertheless, he could feel the strangest feeling within him for the woman standing not ten feet away, this warmth that he couldn't understand, not now. He'd felt something like it before, but that had been a different time and place, and a different sort of love all together. Still, this feeling was odd, because he knew that he was feeling this emotion for her, not for the person standing in her place.

And then, the world was righted. Kanda was once again Kanda. Vanya was Vanya, and Nthanda was sound asleep. Kanda felt sick to his stomach, and his vision felt as if it had just gone from double vision straight to single again. This was the second time in a month. What was going on?

_"Weird,"_ Nthanda's mother muttered in his ear, though he doubted she realized she was so close, if that was possible for a spirit. He blinked, looking off in a different direction from the pair at the window.

"What do you mean, weird?" Kanda mumbled quietly under his breath. She couldn't have possibly felt it, too. He was the only person who would have this problem, save for... well, there was no use broaching that subject.

" _Jus'... thought I felt somethin'. Like some'n was with me, y'know? Not like y'all are, or nothin'. I'm talkin' like with me, like... like dead. Ain't never felt nothin' like that before_." Kanda felt his throat constrict, and a feeling of overwhelming confusion, rage, and despair passed over him for a minute. He had been so close to realizing what that feeling was, and he'd actually... actually enjoyed that warmth, and now it was gone, leaving behind this cold, dark hole. He hadn't even known it was there, but now it blared its presence like a boy with a bugle.

He'd felt like this before. It had been a long time ago on a mission with yet another woman, though she was significantly older than Vanya, and he'd only been fourteen. The experience had disoriented him so much that he'd flown into rages at the slightest provocation afterwards for nearly a day. That hole had existed, and he hadn't been able to define or pinpoint it. Even the strange warmth had discomforted him, breeding doubt and suspicion within about himself. He'd buried the memory, unwilling to acknowledge it.

"Yeah," he muttered. He looked up Vanya, and he noticed she was staring at him. He narrowed his eyes at her, discontent written all over his face at having to recognize her presence. Nthanda slumbered in her arms, and Kanda stood up. He walked towards Vanya, slowly with sure steps like a predator standing its ground against another of its kind. He took Nthanda carefully from Vanya's arms, and the two white appendages fell like limp rubber to her sides. She looked up at him, and he was surprised for all of a moment to see a small edge of hurt in her stare. He returned her stare, radiating his displeasure.

"I'll take care of it," Kanda stated firmly. Vanya looked up at him, her head barely even reaching his chest. She practically had to tilt her head all the way back to look up at him. Her stare went from a small hint of hurt to a steely wall of indifference. That made more sense to him.

"Him," Vanya answered back with a strong, though little, voice. Kanda frowned, suddenly confused. It must've shown on his face, because she rolled her eyes, and she reiterated, "Jyou called him it. He is not it, he is he. See human for human." She slowly turned, and she walked out of the room. The minute the door closed behind her, Kanda felt his body completely relax. He hadn't even noticed that he'd been so tense. CROW bothered him more than he liked to admit.

He looked down at Nthanda. There were times he thought of Nthanda as no more than a mission. He took care of the kid, made sure that he was changed, fed, and healthy, and that was all. Those times were a lot more common than the antithesis.

And then there were the times when he could almost feel that warmth within him whenever he thought about Nthanda. The kid had a personality, one that was cantankerous as an old man, stalwart as a warrior, easily disturbed, and melancholy. There were moments where he watched Nthanda experience this sort of distilled joy, such as when he played with his drum, or when he laughed at something Ellis had done. During those times, he almost wished that he could be the object from which that joy had issued, but he knew that this was not possible for the likes of him. Kanda was not one to bring about happiness - quite the opposite in fact.

He had accepted that fact, but that didn't mean his mind didn't wander to wondering if he could do something like that, make someone purely joyful, purely happy. He hated himself, that he would even entertain such a useless thought, but he decided that perhaps it was merely human nature that dictated this offshoot of thought. Even so, he often wondered if there was something wrong with him as well, that he would want this... and yet never act on it and accept that it can never happen.

Exhausted from this sudden emotional debacle, Kanda sat down in his chair. He inspected Nthanda again at his mother's bequest, seeing that he was still dry and asleep. His skin was significantly cooler, though not at all the normal heat of a young baby's body. Kanda had grown used to the unnatural heat that Nthanda exhuded, and he paid no attention to this. Instinct of a sort told Kanda that Nthanda was now at a normal body temperature, or at least normal for the strange little tyke.

He looked out the window, watching the skyline slowly turn lighter and lighter. He sighed.

The day had begun. It figured.

* * *

"Oh, for God's sake, stay still!"

"How the hell am I supposed to stay still when you're digging your fingers into my back?"

"I thought a top-notch warrior like you can take anything -"

"Doesn't mean I don't feel it, you old bag!"

Kanda winced again as another dab of after-sun was stuck to his shoulder. They'd been traveling for days. The train had had to make frequent stops, and eventually the tracks had actually been completely decimated by the local anti-government militia group. Frustrated by the delay, Kanda had conferred with his unlikely band of companions about going off on their own ahead of the train, and by 'confer', he means 'walking off in the direction of the next outpost without further ado.' Vanya and Ellis had been less than pleased, seeing as Vanya appeared to be on a deadline and Ellis was a little bit apprehensive of being out in the wilderness without the amenities of modern civilization.

And so, Kanda had decided that it was much too hot to just go around wearing a shirt underneath the hot, uncomfortable sun. He'd wandered around shirtless in the city as well, though only for short spurts of time. He'd thought the same principle could be used here. Vanya had been much of the same mind, though she was still wearing a loose tank top along with her usual bandages. With Nthanda strapped to his chest with a scarf, Kanda had tramped over the South African countryside through scrubby land, rolling hills, and short, stocky trees. He now had a two angry, red stripes running down his shoulder and back where his scarf had cut into his shoulder and saved the covered skin from a righteously furious sunburn.

"GENTLE. Do you not understand that word!" Kanda grumbled as it stung across his back. They were using a concoction Din had made up for them nearly fifteen minutes ago from local plants. He was currently giving Vanya the same treatment, although she was quieter about it, if still radiating the same amount of displeasure. Din chuckled as Kanda kept complaining and Ellis kept rebutting. Nthanda, strangely enough, was entirely unaffected, though he was, of course, shielded by the sun inside of his little pouch.

"We hike mehbe fifty, sixty more miles befoe we hit deh gorge. It take us... eh, I seh tree days tops to get dere," Dingane stated as he smeared more of the foul smelling paste. Vanya grumbled something under her breath, something pertaining to 'shoving a train' into rather unmentionable places. Din laughed to himself, dark lips pulled back over startlingly white teeth.

The laughter was cut short as a rustling sound overtook the brown-yellow savanna. There was a hush as the group tensed, watching the grass sway with the sudden wind in an eerie display. The threat of militia and Akuma created an atmosphere of unstable calm that could shift at any moment. The long, high grasses didn't help that fact, as it was all too easy for an Akuma or a man with a gun to be hiding within their long stalks. The gently rolling hills could more than likely hide a group of fighters or a pack of murderous Akuma.

However, this time, it seemed to merely be a false alarm. The wind died down, and the waves of grass stilled. Kanda could feel the paste on his back beginning to dry out as it soaked into his skin and crumbled at the touch.

"We should keep moving," he stated, suddenly very serious. He had the feeling they'd stayed there for too long. He looked around for Nthanda, whom he let crawl around and explore. After being in his little pouch for so long, he was cranky and restless. If there was anything to say of the usually dour baby, he was energetic. Kanda had no doubt he'd managed to crawl a good five feet away, and he didn't have the parental ability to keep an eye on him for more than a few minutes at a time before letting his mind drift off on a separate topic, allowing the little tyke time to escape his gaze.

It seemed that Nthanda had once again taken advantage of Kanda's lack of parental worry by wandering into the grasses. The first time he'd done so, Ellis had nearly fallen over and died of a heart attack, though Kanda himself wasn't too worried. Despite the danger of snakes and bugs, he wasn't shaken up too badly about it as long as the kid was within walking distance, but then again, Kanda was not exactly the poster child for parenting.

"Vehre did zeh littlen von go? Jyou let him run off again!" Vanya suddenly stated with incredulity. Kanda scoffed, standing up from his half-squatting, half-sitting position on a rock. He walked into the grass where he'd seen the little boy last, and he heard the familiar sounds of Nthanda gurgling away nearly fifty feet in that direction. He frowned as he realized that it had happened again.

As of late, Nthanda had taken to appearing and disappearing in random places. Kanda knew this should worry him more, but he couldn't seem to muster up any more worry considering just how taxing it was to travel with an Innocence wielding toddler, an elderly woman, an oddly cheery Finder, and a cruelly kind CROW. Nthanda should've died probably a grand total of fifty times since the start of their trip from East London nearly three weeks ago, but here he was. Kanda was guessing the kid was tougher than he looked, especially given his Innocence, and that the baby was self-sufficient to a point. He still didn't like being put down and practically threw a mini-tantrum every time Kanda set him down, but Kanda's glare could take down Nthanda's petulant stare in a heartbeat.

Kanda finally swept away the swath of grass in front of a rather large clearing, and his face deadpanned as he stared.

_MY BABY -!_

You can't be serious.

Ellis and Vanya appeared behind him, each leaning around him to see what he was staring at. Din was farther behind, and by the time he saw what was happening, the other two had their mouths hanging open.

Nthanda was playing with a puff adder. It was long, nearly a meter total in length, and it was the color of sand. It easily blended in with the dead grasses beneath the living, tall grass, and its eyes bulged out of its head as Nthanda whipped it and held it around the neck with his pudgy hands. He gurgled pleasantly as he played with the poisonous snake, and the entire party of travelers could only stare in horror.

"Kanda... Kanda, go and get that away from him. Dear Lord in heaven above, get that thing out of his hands," Ellis whispered furiously to the point of its volume reaching a yell. Kanda muttered, "Hell, looks like he has that under control."

_MY BABY HAS A SNAKE! A SNAKE, YA CLODHEAD! GET IT AWAY, GET IT AWAY -_

, jyou can't just leave zeh beby wit a snake," Vanya muttered, transfixed by Nthanda's rough handling of the snake.

"All right. You grab the snake. I'm not going to do it," Kanda growled.

_WHY ARE YOU JUST STANDIN' THERE -_

"This is the fifth time in three days! Last time it was a boomslang he pulled out of a tree!" Ellis fretted loudly over Kanda and Vanya bickering about who should grab the snake and what to do if either was bit.

"I get bit, and you're all screwed trying to fight Akuma -"

"Jyou hef ze sense of deerection of a rock, end ve vould be lost in a heartbeat -"

_\- AND THEN HE'LL GET BIT AND HE'LL START SWELLIN' LIKE A BALLOON-_

"Eh, Kanda, mehbe they right, cos deh behby look like he gone try 'n eat dat snehk."

"QUIET!"The world seemed to follow suit with Kanda's command, save for the small child who was gurgling away as he continued to try and gum the snake in his hands to death. Kanda walked over to the baby, squatted down to his hieght, and held out his hand.

"Snake. Now," he ordered tersely, his words clipped short. Nthanda's face scrunched up in distaste as if he recognized that he was being ordered to do something. He turned his face away, snake still in his mouth as it flailed and jerked in his hands. Kanda placed a hand on top of his head and turned it his way, staring into Nthanda's eyes as the kid glared with his big, brown eyes. The circle in the middle of his chest glinted past the snake, and Nthanda grumbled something while simultaneously pouting through a mouthful of reptile. Kanda narrowed his eyes.

"Snake. NOW." The combination of touch, voice command, and stare instilled doubt in the little baby's face, and he reluctantly took the snake out of his mouth, handing it over to Kanda grumpily as if to say 'I didn't even want it anyways.' Kanda flicked the snake back into the grass, hurtling it nearly twenty feet, and with a touch of amusement noted that it had fainted upon release. He didn't even hear it slither away.

"Kanda... you... you just... ordered" Ellis shakily said, pointing. Kanda picked up Nthanda, dusted him off, and stated, "Can't ever start too young." Vanya blocked his way through the grass, and the two had yet another staredown. Kanda lifted a single eyebrow, and Vanya sighed.

She took a handkerchief from a pocket on her pants, and she wet it from her water bottle. She cleaned off Nthanda's hands, and she said, "Jyou should be more cayrefol. This... this could hef ended behdly." Nthanda stared up at Kanda petulantly, but he didn't fight being held.

"End if jyou vere bitten?" she asked, looking up at him. The tension was thick, but this tension was not like the animosity they'd had before. This was more of a patient tension rather than a chafing one. It was the sort of thickness that existed between two people who weren't sure if they could get along or not.

"Tch," Kanda scoffed, and he brushed past her. Vanya stood there, and she gave a small chuckle as she shook her head and followed him. Ellis wasn't far behind in a sort of dazed state, and Din could only smile his wide smile, wondering at what sort of other miracles were going to happen around the strange man with the sword on his waist and stone in his face.

* * *

 

The fire blazed, illuminating the outlying landscape. Jackals howled beyond the perimeter of the fire, and Kanda could see them prowling, mere dark, inky outlines against the lighter dark of nighttime. He turned his attention back to the the fire. They'd just eaten a dinner consisting of tubers and poultry from some sort of bird with an awfully annoying call of haa-haa-haa-haa-dek. Kanda picked his teeth with one of the bones, and Ellis gave him a glare.

"Even out in the wilderness, you should at least keep some modicum of societal grace," she muttered, punctuating this statement with a keen sip out of her china teacup. Kanda had absolutely no idea how she'd managed to keep all her chinaware intact for so long. He figured that she'd learned a thing or two from traveling out of Central, or she was just so stubborn that none of her chinaware dared break on her.

He didn't bother to answer her, and he fed Nthanda another piece of yam. The little tyke greedily sucked it off of Kanda's fingers, hanging on to his hand. Vanya chuckled as Nthanda babbled, almost whining for some more food. Kanda gave him a look, and Nthanda continued to suck on the swordsman's calloused fingers. Din stated, "If ya en't careful, he may johst eatcha fingers off, Mistuh Kanda. He that hungry sometimes. I seen him, ha ha!" Kanda rolled his eyes as Ellis chuckled.

It was quiet for another moment more, and the jackals howled again. Kanda felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. By himself, he wouldn't have been so wary, but seeing as he was with a group of travelers, he felt almost obligated to protect them. His old sense of duty hadn't left, obviously. He looked out into the darkness as Ellis suddenly asked Vanya, "So, tell me dear, where exactly are you from. Your accent is familiar, but I can't quite place it. Prague, perhaps? Or maybe Lwow?"

"No, no," Vanya laughed. "I em frohm Sent Petyasburg, in Russia. Vat about jyou, Missus Ellis? Jyou do not sound like von frohm Johannesburg."

"Oh, the topic of origin, is it? I'm from Bristol, England, actually. I moved to South Africa with my husband after retiring from Central. What about you, Din? You sound like you're from the Dutch Congo than from South Africa," she noted sardonically. Din shrugged, and he said, "Cohme from Mozambique, tiny teeny li'l tribe out dere. Move to deh South Africa when I was nineteen, make money for meh sick sister. Got wit deh Order, they treat me good, real good. Been wid 'em ever since." It was quiet again.

"'N you, Mistuh Kanda? Where you frohm?" The swordsman continued to stare out into the dark, seeing shapes drift in and out, some of them real and others imagined. He could see things from the past, half-formed blobs of places and people he used to know but could no longer remember. The memories came in spurts - they were irregular and hard to hang on to when they did come. Still, no matter where he was, always in the dark he imagined he could see her somewhere, always on the edge of his mind and yet at the same time never actually present, always afraid to actually remember her for fear of what would follow afterwards.

"Nowhere in particular," Kanda answered. He knew that this was raising questions, and no doubt someone was going to ask, but the aura of unapproachability around him was thick and heavy. His past was not something to delve in to.

And besides, that was a question that Kanda honestly had no answer for. Was he from Japan, from Tokyo (or was it Okinawa? Or from Osaka? Or maybe from Kyoto?), or was he from China, where he'd been reborn again into a different body and a different name? Who was he now - still that man who'd died beside her or the poor teenage wreckage left in the wake of a horrible experiment that had resulted in the deaths of tens, if not hundreds, of people? Was there any place Kanda could call a home or an origin?

The silence thickened, made even thicker by the intercepting howls from the local predators. Nthanda smacked the drum he'd dug out from Kanda's bag, the small instrument making arrhythmic noises as he slapped his hands across the hide surface. Kanda looked down at the tyke, and he picked him up, separating him from his drum. For the third time that day, Nthanda pouted, and Kanda wondered where he'd learned that. He knew it wasn't him. He wondered if Vanya just randomly pouted throughout the day, and he'd picked it up from her.

Speaking of the CROW, she was pinning more bugs to her corkboard. She'd written special things in her home tongue underneath, smooth strokes of a fountain pen leaving archaic letters only she understood. She watched as they twitched with a stalwart face, as if she were an executioner doing her job rather than committing herself to a hobby. Kanda shifted his focus to Ellis, who was writing in a notebook. Kanda walked past her, looking over her shoulder to see what she was putting to paper as he headed towards the blanket he was using as Nthanda's makeshift bed. Ellis, however, noticed, and she asked, "You have a question?"

He pointed to the notebook, and Ellis shrugged. "Just a journal of our little adventures. I've been keeping track of all of our little detours, just in case it comes handy. You never know. Documentation is always a good idea."

Sounds like something the idiot rabbit would say, Kanda thought to himself. He vaguely noted as he began to put Nthanda to bed that his mother had been strangely quiet, but he wasn't overly worried. She disappeared for days and then came back, just as naggy and annoying as ever. Nthanda kept trying to crawl away, and Kanda kept having to drag him back. Finally, annoyed beyond belief with the kid's energetic scrambling away, Kanda dropped his sword on the baby's midsection. Nthanda made noises of irritation as he tried to get out from under the heavy sword, but to no avail. Kanda 'hmphed' decisively as Nthanda's struggles slowly ceased, and he fell asleep.

The fire died down, and the others slowly began to sleep. One by one, they laid down, the warm blanket of sleep taking them over. Ellis finished off her entry with a flourish, and she put her pen back into her pack. It had special compartments for pens and other delicate things, and she carefully inserted the pen so that it wouldn't leak. Looking around, she saw that the others had all quickly succumbed to Morpheus, the Greek God of dreams.

She began to head off to her own makeshift bed made of assorted petticoats when she spied something out of the corner of her eye in the dying glow of embers from the fire.

She smiled as Kanda muttered something in his sleep before dragging Nthanda's bed closer to him in a groggy state of being half-awake. He set his head down next to the prostrate babe, and the little boy took hold of a strand of Kanda's hair, tangling his fingers in it. In sleep, Kanda looked ten times younger. The hard, worn demeanor he usually wore melted off in the wake of sleep. The frown lines that usually swept over his brow were nonexistent. His arm was underneath Nthanda's blanket, supporting the baby's head with his forehead pressed to the little one's side, and he looked almost happy this way.

"To sleep, perchance to dream," Ellis muttered. She shook her head, removing her glasses from her nose and letting them hang on the chain as she lowered herself to the ground and allowed sleep to take her as it had taken her other four companions.

In the night, another jackal called out, the howl followed by others, singing a song that meant 'you are not alone.'


	6. An Awfully Eventful Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a brief run-in with insurgents and a rickety bridge, this sorry band hides out to avoid retribution.

"Just my luck. This is perfect, just _frikkin'_ perfect," Kanda grumbled angrily. Trapped just in a crack of land not thirty feet away was his sword, the only part visible being the hilt. Seeing as it didn't have a very large hand guard on it, the traditional katana had almost fallen completely in the tiny crevice. Nthanda jabbered nonsensically in a rather irate voice as if this was a mere nuisance rather than a potentially life threatening situation.

A blast of buckshot hit the log Kanda was hiding behind, and splinters smacked him in the face. He muttered a string of curses, and he looked around for his other companions.

They'd accidentally stumbled across a bunch of militia men with rifles and shotguns at a rail bridge that spanned a fairly thin ravine. It looked like they were planning on destroying the bridge across the gorge, if the pay load big enough to blow a hole in the moon had anything to say. Unfortunately for Kanda and his merry band of travelers, they'd come in at exactly the wrong moment, and they'd been hiding for the better part of thirty minutes. Dark voices shouted as they searched through the stand of trees and long grasses for the group. They'd already fired off several shots into the grass, probably a literal example of shooting in the dark. Usually, that sort of thing wouldn't bother Kanda too much.

However, he would much rather _not_ be shot. He was in a bit of a pickle at the moment - he'd had to take down an entire army of Level Twos a few hours ago, and that had involved taking several hits he wouldn't have bothered with if he'd been traveling by himself. Vanya had been _somewhat_ of a help (with big emphasis on 'somewhat'), seeing as she'd run out of spell tags to use, and she'd been restricted to using only a pair of switchblades. And then she'd run off with Nthanda, which had caused a bit of a panic seeing she almost literally _disappeared_ after that. Kanda kept a firm hold on the baby, who'd been gassy for the past thirty minutes. Come to think of it, the kid had gas in the _last_ fight, too. Kanda gagged as another waft of putrid baby-stench colored the air green.

He balled up his fists as he heard the sounds of screaming. Crisp, angry English-accented words colored the air with such profanity that Kanda couldn't imagine ithat it was coming out of such an old woman's mouth. He settled deeper into his hiding place, wondering why he'd even allowed Ellis to come on this journey. Such an old person on a trip like this... geriatrics were always a liability. He should've told her to go back.

Suddenly, Din slid across the dirt to Kanda's hiding place, the tall grass keeping him from immediate view. A gunshot spat out a bullet into the tall grasses, luckily nowhere near them. The usually cheerful Finder was especially grim, the transition from his usual joking demeanor to dead seriousness causing a stark contrast.

"How's deh babe?" Din asked as he took off his phone-pack. He'd dutifully taken care of it this entire time, making sure to keep it in order despite the lack of reception. Kanda looked down at Nthanda. The baby was trying to crawl over his shoulder to see what was going on beyond the log. He pulled the baby back into his lap as Nthanda's dark head peeked over their cover.

"Smelly and hyper," Kanda growled. He looked over at Din and was surprised to find him loading a long rifle. His face deadpanned as he asked, "Where the hell did you get _that?_ " Din cracked another one of his smiles, and he said, "Learn fast out here, Mistuh Kanda. Ohlways have a gun somewhere no one expect t'find it." He leveled it across the log, and he took aim. Ellis continued to shout and curse, and no doubt she was putting up quite a squall because they hadn't been able to drag her away yet.

Kanda looked up over the log just as Din squeezed off a shot, and he just managed to cover Nthanda's ears in time to protect him from the noise. Kanda winced as pain lanced through his left eardrum, and he caught the sight of blood through the curtain of grasses. Din ducked and loaded again, and he crept back into the grass. He only poked his head out long enough to tell Kanda, "Get ya sword, take 'em down, 'n I'll go cover ya back." He disappeared back into the cover of the tall grass, and Kanda eyed his sword.

Vanya suddenly intruded, skidding in a cloud of dirt, and the samurai grumbled dissent. Everyone and their grandmother was trying to get to him, it seemed. Vanya didn't pay any attention to his grumbling, and she said, "Ve hef to go. I hef been vatching ze men at ze bridge, end dey're getting clohse to finished vit deh explosive. End ve can't take Nthanda vit us right now. Too many men vit too many bullets." Kanda stared at her.

"I don't remember you saying anything like that five hours ago," Kanda growled, and Vanya narrowed her eyes.

"Zat vass different. _Jyou_ hef no sword, and _I_ hef no spell tags left. Much more dangerous for beby Nthanda," Vanya argued. Kanda crossed his arms and looked off in another direction petulantly. Vanya groaned and rolled her eyes.

"Jyou ect like a _child -_ "

Another spray of splinters rained over the both of them. This log was taking a real beating. Suddenly, Ellis shouted something along the lines of 'take that, you disgusting baboons', and a deafening scream echoed over the green, South African plain. It sounded like Ellis got a hold of an unlucky militia man's gun.

"Heh. Ellis gave them a run for their money," Kanda grumbled, and Vanya actually chuckled. Nthanda clapped his hands clumsily at the sound of another gunshot, and the two fighters stared at the baby.

"Ve are noht fery good parents."

"Since when did we become parents?" The two went still as voices drew nearer, and Ellis fell silent. She must've run off into the bush to hide.

"Head to the bridge. Find Ellis if you can. Take out anyone who stops you," Kanda ordered. For a moment he saw indignation in her face, and he thought she might argue with him, but she turned tail just as quick and headed in the direction of the gorge. He watched the grass shift and move as she left, gunshots and yelling punctuating the air with exclamation points. As she ran off, Kanda looked across the grass to the clearing where his sword stuck out of the ground. He groaned. He'd need both hands for this, and he didn't want to bring Nthanda. He looked down at the baby who was amazingly quiet and unfazed by the sounds of destruction. He wasn't sure if he should be disturbed or not that the kid had gotten so used to the noises of war.

Never the less, it would take him probably six seconds tops to reach the sword, grab it, and another six seconds to come back. That was a total of twelve seconds that he'd be exposed, which meant he'd be shot at. Vanya was right - this wasn't like earlier today. He didn't have a weapon to deflect anything with. He looked down at Nthanda, and he pointed at the baby.

"Stay," he said hesitantly. What was the kid, a dog? Did they even obey commands like 'sit', 'stay', and 'lie down'? Hopefully he didn't know 'play dead', because Kanda didn't much appreciate suffering a heart attack. Still, it didn't look like Nthanda was going to go anywhere. The baby merely patted the dirt, unperturbed by the noises going on in the grass around him. He farted again, and Kanda palmed his face. The haggard samurai looked out to the clearing, and he made a dash. Loud yells followed, and the sound of rifles being cocked or loaded filled the air. He dashed back, and _that_ was when the shots came after him. Luckily, these were much smaller bullets coming from much more horrible marksmen.

Kanda skidded through the grass towards his initial hiding spot, and he was glad to find that Nthanda hadn't moved any in the seconds he'd been gone. In fact, the kid had actually _fallen asleep_ in the shadow of the log, and Kanda felt annoyed and relieved. Nthanda must've been born with nerves made of steel. Kanda picked the baby up, but as he did so, he heard the cock of a gun at the base of his neck. Cold metal pressed against the nape of his skull, and his eyes narrowed.

"I give you three seconds to stand up," a gruff, male voice stated. Kanda stood up slowly, one arm cradling a sleeping baby and the other clenched tight as he gripped his sword. The gunmetal continually pressed against his neck as he rose.

He went over the steps in his mind, everything traveling at the speed of light and the speed of a snail all at once.

_First, take out the gun._ Kanda's foot slid back ever so slightly, his wrist rotating as his entire body folded underneath the gun. The sword made contact with the gun, knocking it away. The man's face contorted into an expression of surprise and distress as he fired the gun, the noise waking Nthanda and causing him to scream loudly in annoyance.

_Second, take out the knees._ Kanda completed the arc, causing sparks as the katana slid off of the gun. It continued around, hitting the man squarely above the knees and cutting the tendons and ligaments holding the thigh muscles to the knee. The man fell as his legs refused to support him,

_Third, take out the throat._ The sword arm was cocked back, the tip a mere foot from the man's throat, and just as he began to push it forwards, he stopped. His eyes widened as the swordsman stared at the man on his knees, finding his body strangely locked in place.

Nthanda tugged on his hair, his screaming far away as a voice rang in his ear, a voice like that of Nthanda's mother, but so much... _more._

**STOP.** Kanda tried to turn his head towards the voice, but it was everywhere and nowhere. A rush of other voices in different languages assailed him, and his only thought was that he must be going crazy.

**BACK AWAY FROM THE MAN.** Kanda obeyed against his will, every muscle straining to defy the order. The man on his knees attempted to level the gun, but he fell over, screaming as blood gushed out from his legs.

**GO TO THE BRIDGE.** Kanda started to walk through the tall grass towards the gorge, in his mind shrieking and tearing down at the mental walls that were now hemming him in. He had only gone about three yards before he felt the voice leave, and the rush of voices left with it. He suddenly dropped to his knees, gasping for air. Nthanda sniffled, and Kanda could only rub his forehead, wondering what in the _hell_ that had been.

_What's goin' on? Why are there so many people with guns? What did you do! Idiot! You're supposed to be keeping my baby safe, not throwin' him into danger!_

"Shut up! I know that!" Kanda shouted, deciding that he didn't care if anyone was there to hear. Whatever had just happened... that voice was familiar, but he didn't recognize it... he was... confused... angry... _furious..._

Kanda suddenly ran for the gorge, deciding he couldn't just waste time. They'd figure this out later. He could see men rushing towards him as he burst out of the grass. Their bullets whizzed past, but he could easily duck and dodge these. These bullets were nothing compared to Akuma bullets. He deflected several with his sword, sending them into the nearest person with the lightest flick. He had to cover a lot of ground. There was about five hundred yards of tree-studded green plain ahead of him, and right there was the bridge.

It was a wooden construct that started at the edge of a gorge that was probably about a quarter of a mile wide. He skidded down an embankment, noises following him as Nthanda screamed angrily.

And then, just like that, he was in that nowhere again. He'd taken a step, and Kanda was back in that place that wasn't a place. He was shocked by the sudden transition, watching the nothingness pass him by as small segments of images flashed in his mind's eye and in front of him, correlating to whatever was in his head.

Just like the last time, as quickly as it had appeared, it left, and Kanda found himself standing next to Vanya at the bridge. Vanya shouted in surprise, nearly hitting him as she backed away in astonishment.

"How did... jyou vere... Never mind!" Vanya shouted, overwhelmed. Another man ran up to her, and she gave him a foot to the face for his troubles. Kanda smacked down another militia man, and he growled out, "How close are Din and Ellis?" Vanya picked up an abandoned rifle, checked the ammo, and cocked it. She looked up and aimed before answering, "Do not knoh. Last I saw, zey vere at zat tree dere." She pointed with the gun towards an acacia, and just as she did, a man peeked out from around it to shoot. She hit the tree, scaring the man back behind the trunk. She cursed in Russian as Kanda kept a look out.

"And the explosives?" he asked.

"All of it iss some sort of nyew stohff, dynamite I zink. As long as nobody sets it off, ve're good," she stated. She'd regained her composure quickly, that Kanda had to hand to her. Actually, that wasn't _all_ he had to hand to her.

"Here. Babysit," he stated, handing a crying Nthanda to him. "Careful - he farts." Vanya gave Nthanda a horrified look before flashing an annoyed stare to Kanda. However, he'd already left, and she muttered something about dumb swordsmen before leveling the gun one-handed towards the acacia tree again.

Kanda, meanwhile, had already spotted where Din and Ellis were making their stand. Ellis was loading a shotgun behind Din who was carefully picking off the guys around them, but Kanda could tell that they were running out of ammo by the amount of shells littering the ground. Kanda cut down two men who were attempting to get them from behind, and he slid into place by the Finder and the old woman.

"Any injuries?" he asked. Din shook his head, despite the fact his arm was still in a splint, and Ellis shook her head as well.

"Good," Kanda stated, hauling the shouting and rather angry Ellis over his shoulder. Din immediately bolted after him as they ran across the impromptu battlefield. Gunshots sounded off, and Din ducked on instinct. Kanda actually _ignored_ them on instinct as Vanya picked off those that were trying to shoot at the fleeing victims of circumstance. Kanda set Ellis down the minute that they reached the bridge ramparts where Vanya was making her stand. She'd retreated behind the sandbags after she'd been grazed across the cheek, and she was careful about poking her head out into the open air now that the militia knew someone was out from cover and shooting them.

"For goodness sakes - that is NOT how you treat a lady! Do you do this with every woman you know?" Ellis shrieked, pulling her skirts back around her ankles. She dropped the gun like it was covered in snakes, and she added, "Just about gave all of those dirty men a free show, lifting me like that!"

"I saved your life. Giving a show's probably worth that much," Kanda answered back as he took Nthanda from Vanya. The CROW hunkered down next to Kanda, and she growled out, "You're right. He farts." Kanda smirked. Its about time someone else took the whiffs from now on. The farts had sort of developed over time, and Kanda had no idea why the kid got gassy when he was in danger. Maybe it was some sort of self-defense mechanism or something, because he smelled _horrible._ Kanda figured he could gauge just how bad the situation was by giving Nthanda a good sniff.

"Eh, Kanda. Noht ta press ya 'r nuttin', but we gotta _go._ Dem's gettin' closer to deh bridge, 'n it only take a bullet t'set all that off," Din stated. Kanda nodded in agreement. _Finally._ Someone sane was on his side.

Kanda got up and headed for the bridge, and the rest followed suit. Nthanda hung on to Kanda's front, fingers gripping the fabric as he sniffled. Just as he set foot on the bridge, though, he sucked in a deep breath in surprise.

The bridge was only wide enough for the train. On either side there was about six inches of wood past the tracks, and below that there was a drop that spanned for probably a good half-mile. There was a tiny glimmer of a ribbon that _might_ be a river, but he was so far up he couldn't tell. All of a sudden, he felt like he was a little toohigh up, and he felt sweat prick at his lower back. He pushed the unease to the back of his mind, and he walked confidently down the middle of the tracks.

"Keep to the middle, and you'll be fine. Where's the payload?" Kanda shouted. Din pointed ahead as he cautiously took his first couple steps. Kanda looked ahead, and he saw it, a massive bundle of something that was sitting on top of the tracks along with several barrels of what was no doubt gunpowder to help it along just in case the dynamite didn't do the job. There was probably enough to blow a tunnel through a mountain. A shot zinged off the tracks, and Din jumped back, looking behind him. The militia men weren't taking chances. If they hit the payload and they were too close, they'd end up in the middle of the explosion as well.

"Hurry it up. I don't want bullet holes," Kanda complained as he trekked across the bridge. The wind picked up, and Kanda's unease heightened, but he just continued to put one foot in front of the other. He could hear Ellis making small, frightened noises every time the wind pushed her, and he resisted the urge to groan. He scrambled over the pile of explosives with a careless demeanor, sincerely freaking out both Ellis and Din. Vanya helped Din and Ellis over the explosives, and Kanda was already near the end of the bridge.

"Zenk jyou four helping me," she muttered under her breath as she neared the end of the bridge, and Kanda shouted back from the gorge's cliff, "I heard that!"

The last word left his mouth, and all hell broke loose.

Din and Ellis ducked on the tracks as the gunpowder very suddenly exploded. Vanya was caught in the fireball, and she fell sideways off the bridge to avoid it. She only managed to save herself by getting stuck in between the supports underneath. A stray piece of buckshot had actually sparked a small trace of gunpowder, which was enough to catch on a canvas bag holding more gunpowder. The flame continued until, finally, it reached the gunpowder inside. It ignited the rest of the powder, setting it off, yet miraculously had not set off the dynamite... At least, not yet. The bag was still burning, and the dynamite was inside of a large, covered canvas. The militia men weren't all that smart, and they'd thought that it might rain and leave the dynamite unusable, a gross miscalculation, but lucky for the travelers, seeing as it had managed to keep the dynamite from exploding.

Kanda watched as Din and Ellis struggled to stand back up. Vanya was nowhere to be seen, but he could hear her. Nthanda gurgled frantically as he tried to scramble out of Kanda's arms. The baby pointed to the two trapped on the bridge, crying. Ellis and Din finally began scrambling, though drunkenly, and Kanda ran across the bridge as fast as he could manage.

"Oh not this again," Ellis grumbled as Kanda hurtled towards her. She was once more hauled over his shoulder, kicking and screaming her indignation, and Din was shouldered across as Kanda urged him forwards.

As he set them down, Ellis gasped.

"Vanya. She's stuck down there. Underneath, in the support beams," she breathlessly said, shaking as she pointed below. Kanda looked across to the payload, gauging how long it would take for it to explode. He still had a little time, but there was a good chance that the bridge would blow, and the entire thing would come down.

"We can't leave her there, Kanda," Ellis stated firmly. Din looked in between Kanda and Ellis. He was caught between these two boulders, not sure where to go. They were glaring daggers. Din hated to say it, but he could see why Kanda would be skeptical. It didn't sound like Vanya could be saved, and what was the point if more of them were going to die? Still, to leave her there sounded so cruel. As if to punctuate this point, Din heard screaming from below as the entire bridge swayed with the light breeze passing through the gorge. She must've been pinched in between the two supports, and the leaning bridge was crushing her.

"She's a CROW. She's been prepared for death since the day she was chosen," Kanda growled, and he turned away from the gorge. Ellis stood there, flickering her gaze in between the bridge and the swordsman who was walking away. Over his shoulder, Nthanda cried, reaching towards the bridge. The dark baby wailed, but his wails grew softer and softer as Kanda walked farther and farther. Din stared at the bridge, his gaze solemn.

"He mean what he seh," Din stated, his voice almost inaudible. "We leave." Ellis rubbed the bridge of her nose as the men across the gorge began to retreat away from what they knew was an impending explosion. Her shoulders shook, and she shouted, "Is this what they taught you? To forget everyone else and save yourself? To leave an innocent young woman to die?"

"No one is innocent!" Kanda shouted, never turning around. Ellis was taken aback. Kanda still had his back turned, and his shoulders were tensed.

"No one... is innocent," he ground out.

"AAAAGH!" He flinched infinitesimally at the sound of the CROW screaming in pain, but he trudged on. Nthanda continued to scream and cry over his shoulder.

_You really are a bastard._ Nthanda's mother's tone was snide. It seemed everyone was against him today.

"What would you have me do? Kill myself so that those two can wander around and eventually die out there along with your son?" Kanda asked the spirit. She was silent. She couldn't argue with his logic. He had a point.

Nthanda suddenly stopped crying, and leaned back away from Kanda. The samurai looked into the tyke's eyes, and he gave him the usual death stare. Nthanda and Kanda stayed like that before Nthanda suddenly yanked on Kanda's hair.

"OW OW OUCH! DAMN IT, LET GO! FOR THE LOVE OF - HOLY -" Nthanda continued to tug and pull on Kanda's hair, and Kanda kept trying to untangle the kid from his silky locks. This was not what he was expecting!

"Kanda! I tink deh babe wohnts ya t'save Missus Vanya," Din shouted. Kanda turned back to look at the bridge, and the nitroglycerin finally decided to head towards its foregone conclusion and explode. The ground shook, and suddenly pieces of the bridge fell into the ravine. Vanya screamed, a high pitched keening noise.

"Too late," Kanda grumbled as Nthanda continued to fight and tear at his hair. As he watched more chunks of the bridge burn and crumble, a passage came to mind, something he remembered as if from a half-forgotten dream. He'd recited this line so many times...

_To the Lord, our Father, hallowed be thy name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven, give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we -_

"- Forgive our debtors, and do not lead us into temptation, but save us from evil," Kanda recited almost half-consciously as he watched the middle section give way completely. Now, only the supports and the parts of the bridge above it were left. Kanda realized he could still hear Vanya screaming, meaning she was still alive.

That line had come from the Bible, he knew. It was the Lord's Prayer, and he'd heard it thousands of times as a kid, seeing as he'd lived in such a Catholic-saturated environment, but he had never thought that he'd actually remember it. There was that nostalgia, though, and he remembered... something else -

The world, once again, shifted. His eyes were no longer his own - they were a different set, made of different morals and values. They were... brighter. Deeper. He turned his head towards Nthanda, the baby still entangled with a strand of hair, and he looked back at the bridge. That woman was another life, another potential light. She was yet another person who had a chance in this world and -

Just as soon as the shift had happened, it switched back again at a disorienting rate, and Kanda almost had to gasp. The world turned dark again, he was himself, and yet... that old mindset lingered. He had once seen the world as this bright, new place where someone was watching over everybody, giving hope. To believe that now was folly after everything he'd seen, and yet he couldn't let go of it. In that moment, Vanya became a person, not another liability. He hated it, because he felt like his judgement was both clouded and sharpened at the same time. It was... confusing.

And Nthanda still refused to let go of his hair. It seemed like he was going to have to save her if he wanted his hair back.

"Damn," he growled. He stalked back with Nthanda in tow, the baby surprisingly silent. Kanda handed the baby to Ellis, and she blinked in surprise.

"W-what do you think you're doing? You can't... Kanda! That bridge is -!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he retorted irately. He looked over the lip of the gorge, staring down. Vanya was trapped nearly three stories down in a mess of timbers. Luckily, several pieces had allowed the gap she was stuck in to remain open rather than collapse in on itself. It would be hazardous trying to get to her, but it was doable.

"What do we do if you -" Kanda looked back at Ellis with a sardonic look, shutting her up. He muttered, "I'm coming back, don't worry. I don't hate myself enough to commit suicide for somebody else." He ran across the bridge, swinging himself under to the nearest support. The beam was as thick around as his waist, and it held him securely as he clambered down towards the incapacitated CROW. As he neared her, he could see her situation was bad. Her arm was stuck between two beams, her bandages were splotched a dark red, and her side was completely jammed into the crack between the two, breaking supports. The bridge swayed, and she screamed as the two supports rubbed against each other.

"Hang on a second! I'm coming to get you!" Kanda shouted over the creaking of the bridge. There were still burning parts to the bridge, but they were above him. They weren't his immediate problem.

"K-kanda...? Vat are jyou doing! Go back!" she screamed back. Kanda ignored her commands, which definitely made this rescue easier, and he shouted back, "Shut up and stop fantasizing about being a martyr! I'm getting you whether you like it or not!" He finally reached her, screeching to a halt just above where she was trapped. He carefully navigated the beams and grabbed the back of her bandages. Blood was slick over his fingers, and he was suddenly struck by the possibility that he might drop her.

"Come on, help me, idiot! I can't do this by myself!" Actually, he could, but it'd be much more tiresome on him if he did. He might not have the energy to take them both back to the top of the bridge. Suddenly, the bridge rocked, and Vanya came free. She nearly fell out into the ravine, but he managed to haul her out before the beams could completely separate. She clung to him as best she could with her free arm, obviously irked by the contact, and looking more than a bit awkward, but nevertheless hanging on for dear life.

"Leave?" she gasped. Kanda nodded wordlessly, bounding between the beams as the entire structure shuddered. He gritted his teeth as he realized that the entire thing would be coming down soon. There was a roar as the bridge pieces on the other side dropped into the gorge. Kanda was running out of time.

"Hurry up! The thing is collapsing!" Ellis shouted frantically, and Kanda resisted the urge to shout something profane at her. Was he not already getting them out of this mess? He'd _volunteered,_ for the love of the Pope, and it wasn't enough! Kanda suddenly reached the lip of the gorge, pulling himself and his cargo over easily. He deposited her on the ground none-too-gently, and he stared at the bridge behind him. He expected it to drop... but it didn't. It sat there and burned.

He deadpanned. That was just perfect. He didn't even _need_ to hurry. All that energy for nothing.

"How are you dear? Are you all right? That looks awfully nasty. Oh... oh dear..." Ellis put her hand to her mouth as she began to inspect Vanya's wounds, holding Nthanda off at her hip while she looked her over. Kanda peered over her shoulder at the girl, casting his shadow over her. Externally, he showed no surprise, but inside he couldn't help but feel sick.

The flesh of her arm had been pulped. It would take months, if not a year, for it to fully heal to capacity. Her side was bruised and completely purple, and blood leaked into pools from wounds underneath the bandages. Her tunic was completely shredded, and it appeared that she'd broken several ribs. She was perspiring heavily, and her breathing was shallow. Her face was incredibly pale, her eyes half-lidded. Her short hair stuck to her face in strands, blood plastering it to her skin.

"I'll need to take care of this the minute we find a water source or an outpost. There's nothing we can do right now. Din, can you carry her?" Ellis asked, and Din looked doubtful. He scratched his head, and he admitted, "Dunno, mum. M'arm's not up t'snuff, y'know." Kanda reached over and picked up the mostly inert CROW without a word. Ellis blinked, surprised at his sudden altruism.

"We're wasting daylight. I didn't climb all the way down there for nothing," Kanda grumbled to the three. Ellis stood up quickly, toddling as fast as her poor, arthritic knees would allow her. She wanted to take advantage of this sudden burst of good will for as long as it lasted. It wasn't very often that this man did something so ... _nice,_ and she had the feeling that he'd be back to his regular self very soon. Din followed behind rather suspiciously, almost as if he were afraid of the ground he walked on.

Strange to think all this happened in only thirty minutes.

* * *

"How long?" Kanda asked, leaning against a wall. They were in a small bungalow at a depot along the tracks. It was basically a very small, very poor town with a single, haggard doctor who looked like he could give Methuselah a run for his money in age. He was dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and he had so many creases that he put a pug to shame. Still, the people of the town looked healthy, if dirty and care-worn. It seemed that Vanya was going to be in good hands.

The man didn't speak the usual South African pigeon-English, and Din had had to try several different, roundabout phrases to get his meaning across. Dingane spoke with the man, and much hand-gesturing, confused looks, and eye-widened realizations passed between them, and Din finally stated, "He seh a half-year. She's hurt bad, Mistuh Kanda. He don't tink she'll mek it t'rough d'night. Lost too much blood, 'n he not have any equipment for a transfusion. He seh he keep her where she is."

"Is there anything we can do about that?" Ellis asked quietly, softly concerned. Her eyes crinkled around the edges, and she held Nthanda closer. The young babe gummed one of her fingers, and she leaned her cheek into his head. Kanda couldn't help but notice the resemblance in stance to a grandmother with her grandchild. She was definitely the better parent.

Din translated painstakingly slow, and he finally answered back, "He seh nohthin'. Jus' dat we stay wit her for a while. She may die in th'night, she may not. Dunno." He shrugged, and he took off his pack.

The old man rubbed his chin with crooked, wrinkled fingers at a quick, stiff pace. He took Vanya's limpid hand, checking her pulse with shaking fingers. He licked his cracked lips, and Vanya, who up to this point had been mostly unconscious, opened her eyes wide.

Kanda moved at just the right pace. He'd seen her fingers twitch, and intuition had done the rest. The old man stared at the immobile hand underneath his chin, held back only by Kanda's tensed hold. Her fingers twitched for the doctor's throat, and Kanda glared at Vanya. Her eyes were crazed and wide, but as she took deep breaths, she began to take stock of her surroundings. Her arm went limp, leaving Kanda with only a flopping hand and wrist. He carelessly tossed her arm back on to the bed as Vanya moaned and turned her head away towards the wall.

"Tch. CROW," Kanda snorted. The old man's jaw shivered as he mumbled in his native tongue before he shook his head. He got up slowly, and he said a few things to Din. Dingane fought to translate, and he finally stated, "He seh a storm's coming dis way. Big storm, make lots of rain. We need ta stay here, unless we got things for hard travelin', which... we don't." Din looked slightly sheepish as he admitted the last part, some of his smile creeping back on to his face.

He looked at Ellis, and Ellis stared back at him. The two seemed to come to an unspoken agreement as Nthanda babbled and waved an arm in Vanya's direction.

"We'll stay until the storm passes over," Kanda said. "No use practically killing ourselves in the rain." Kanda may be tough, but he wasn't stupid. If good weather had prevailed, he'd have had no qualms with leaving this minute, with or without Ellis and Din. However, even he wasn't willing to go into unknown territory with a baby he was _supposed_ to be bringing back alive through a storm. Not to mention, Akuma loved bad weather - it didn't affect their ability to see and fight, but it sure was a pain in the tuchus for Exorcists."

"I'll ask where we stay," Din said, and he and the old man walked outside, attempting to find a meeting of ideas. When they'd left, Ellis promptly handed Nthanda over to his original caretaker, and Kanda just managed to catch him with a shocked grunt, seeing as he was surprised by the sudden switch. The old woman knelt next to Vanya, and Kanda sighed, "Granny, you don't want to end up that close to her. You saw her almost take out the old man's windpipe, didn't you?"

"Oh, hush. I'm not blind to my own mortality. Besides, I'm a more recognizable face than Mr. Wrinkles out there," Ellis muttered, never taking her eyes off of Vanya. She suddenly put on her pair of bifocals, squinting at some of the markings around Vanya's wrists. The woman was moaning softly, muttering words in Russian and gibberish. Kanda walked over, his curiosity getting the better of him. Nthanda garbled half-formed words as he customarily wound his hands in Kanda's long strands. He tugged, and Kanda winced.

"Ouch! This is getting to be a bad habit," Kanda muttered. Ellis shushed him, and Kanda glowered in silence as the old woman continued to examine the young Central member. She tutted, and she said, "That doctor didn't do too terribly with her, but there are a few things we can fix here and there. I had a stint as a nurse, you know." Kanda rolled his eyes as she went into a spiel about a man with a sliver of fence post in his leg that was nearly a foot long, and he decided to take a look at Vanya himself.

She was heavily bandaged, and she was still in quite a lot of pain. They had local anesthetics here in the town, and they'd only used a few on the bigger wounds around her side and her arm. The arm looked worse than it actually was. It had been scraped completely raw, rather than pulped as Kanda originally thought. Her side, however, was a piece of meat. The skin had been ripped, the muscle beneath had been ground until it resembled the inside of a sausage, and several of the ribs had been cracked. No doubt, that painkiller had worn off by now, and that was why she was suddenly so active.

Kanda caught sight of something on the side of Vanya's neck, and his eyes narrowed to slits.

"And then there was the time where there was a man who took a pair of shears to his own - OOF! Someone had better teach you manners, pushing around old women like you do!" Ellis protested, bustling to the side as Kanda leaned over Vanya, turning her head carefully to the side so he could get a better look at what was on her neck. His eyebrows nearly met, and Nthanda fell silent as Ellis looked over his shoulder.

Vanya had a strange mark etched in the skin of her neck. It was just behind her ear, mostly out of sight, but it most definitely was there. The mark was made up of scar tissue, silvery-white against her ghostly skin. It looked almost like a wax seal. It pictured a pair of horns over a name that Kanda couldn't read circled by more indecipherable words. Kanda straightened up, blinking as he realized that the effect of the scar tissue caused the words to seem to move.

"The child has an awfully strange taste in art," Ellis muttered. "But then again, wisdom is wasted on youth." She shrugged, waddling over to a chair and sitting down with a great _fwump_ of her many skirts. She sighed.

"I'll be glad to have a bath after all this," she groaned, leaning back in her chair and stretching out her legs. Kanda grunted assent, and Nthanda reached for Vanya. The samurai had to restrain the very squirmy child before he fell on top of the woman, and he carried him outside. Looking up at the sky, Kanda could tell the old man was right. Dark clouds threatened, a whitish gray amalgamation hovering over much of the horizon and parts of the town. He could see rain off to the south, and he figured that if they'd waited the militia men out, their gunpowder would've gotten soggy and they wouldn't be in this mess.

As the clouds thundered and night began to creep, Kanda heard noises far off in the distance over the hills. This didn't surprise him as he unhooked Mugen from its sheath and had it at the ready. Nthanda would go back to Ellis in a minute.

Akuma were afoot. Man if he didn't hate fighting in the rain.

* * *


	7. Passing Through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't rain, but it pours. Especially on Kanda.

He stood there, listening carefully. Marie had taught him how to decipher just how far away an Akuma happened to be by the shouts of people and the inevitable gunshots. Though every sense told him that the Akuma were out and about, he couldn't hear them for anything. They must still be hidden. He looked down at Nthanda, who was staring intently at the sky, almost entranced. The child was quiet - Kanda liked that he was remaining so silent. It allowed him time to think. If there was anything Kanda didn't like, it was noise. Then again, if there was anything Kanda didn't like, it was _most everything_ he came in contact with...

"Kanda? Kanda!" The young Exorcist sighed. Ellis was bleating after him again. It figured. He turned around, ignoring the feeling that there was something coming from over the gentle hills that encircled the edge of the town. The rain was just starting, and a few of the drops fell on Nthanda's nose. The small baby wrinkled his nose, looking morosely up at the sky. Kanda casually walked back into the doctor's hut, passing Din and the old man, both talking rapidly, as he walked through the threshold.

Ellis was standing over Vanya, biting a finger. The old woman looked awfully pale, and Kanda wondered what had suddenly made her blanch to the color of a sheet. She looked up at Kanda, and for a moment he saw how truly old Ellis was. A pang went through him, but he wasn't able to pinpoint that pang. He dismissed it, despite the fact that the feeling continued to linger.

"Look at this," Ellis stated breathlessly. She began to uncover some of the bandages over Vanya's chest. The woman was perspiring heavily, her eyes rolling underneath her eyelids. Kanda felt strangely nervous now that Ellis was uncovering her, almost like he was about to do something he shouldn't, but halfway down she stopped, revealing a very bright, very blood-soaked engraving in the flesh. It was old - in fact, it was scarred over completely, despite the fact it was a livid purple color.

"I found similar marks on her feet and her shoulders. This is... This is very strange, Kanda. I don't understand what these mean, and I've never seen them before. Have the CROW always had these?" Ellis asked, her brow furrowed heavily over her lined face. She looked very tired. Distantly, they heard a roll of thunder, and Vanya turned her head to the side, showing the horned marking yet again.

These marks were not quite as similar as the mark on her neck. They were a simplified pair of horns with a seal-like engraving of letters around them, and Kanda scratched the back of his neck in thought. Nthanda strained towards the young woman on the bed, holding out his arms, and Kanda finally relinquished. The baby sat down next to her, leaning curiously over her as far as his little body would allow without toppling over.

"I don't remember CROW having markings other than these," Kanda said, pointing to the CROW's forehead where she wore four dots, two stacked on two. Ellis slapped his hand, and Kanda glared.

"What?" he snapped. Ellis stood up straight, crossing her arms.

"Pointing is rude. Someone has not taught you your manners, obviously. You're a very brutish young man," Ellis said, her high-born British accent even more pronounced than usual. Kanda snorted derisively.

"You think I need tact when I'm about to kill a demon?" Kanda grounded out. Thunder rolled again, this time much closer, and Ellis looked outside. She tottered near the window, and she groaned.

"My arthritis is going to kill me tonight," she muttered under her breath. Kanda ignored her, and he walked towards Vanya's feet. He lifted the cover off of them, and he inspected the horned mark. He felt like he should be able to remember these. They seemed familiar, but he had no idea what they could mean... Kanda wasn't exactly the intellectual type. He felt that knowing too much actually made you _dumber_ rather than smarter, at least in the realm of battle. Thinking too much could just as easily get you killed as thinking too little.

It was a wonder Lavi was still alive, in any case. He did equal amounts of both.

Suddenly, that gave him an idea. Perhaps Lavi would know what these marks meant. He _was_ a Bookman after all, if only an apprentice Bookman. He had had to have some sort of idea on the meaning of sigils and the like.

There was the loud _ratatatatata_ of a machine gun and shouting outside, and Kanda whirled around. He knew something had been after them. Bad weather always had Akuma on its tail... Especially in a little dirt outpost like this, where the people were superstitious and life was bad enough as it was. Kanda picked up his sword, and he began towards the door. Ellis watched with wide eyes, muttering, "Where are you going? Kanda? What do you - Aren't you going to take the baby?"

Kanda ignored her as he stood in the middle of the street, and he turned his head towards the clouds. Sure enough, over the hills he'd been surveying only moments before he could hear the sounds of gunfire and shouting. His eyes narrowed, and Ellis bustled out of the doctor's hut with Nthanda in her arms. From a distance, the samurai could see Din and the old doctor approaching.

"What is it? What's the matter?" Ellis asked briskly, though he could tell that she had a good idea. He grunted, "Akuma." They were silent as they listened to the ruckus.

"How long -"

"Probably ten minutes. If you can, evacuate. If not, try to evacuate. I'll deal with them," Kanda said. Nthanda babbled angrily, almost distraught, as Ellis started to walk away.

And then, suddenly, there was a loud _pop,_ and Ellis screamed. Kanda did a half-spin, wondering if he'd gauged the distance of the Akuma incorrectly, but Ellis was standing there, completely unharmed... minus a dark-skinned baby.

"Oh... Oh Lord in heaven, what... how did he...? He was just here! He was just in my...arms..." Ellis gasped, looking around her, grabbing her skirts in dismay as she realized that the baby had just disappeared. Kanda felt his heart constrict, realizing that his charge had just disappeared and could possibly be anywhere.

There was another loud _pop,_ and Kanda just had enough time to run forward and catch the falling Nthanda. The baby gurgled in annoyance, yanking on Kanda's hair in displeasure. Ellis and Kanda were quiet as they stared at the baby. They shared another look, thoughts racing through their heads before the music of terror wafted over the hills into their ears.

"Kanda! What do we do?" Din shouted, having witnessed everything, yet remaining unfazed. Kanda suddenly felt overwhelmed, but the feeling disappated quickly. He could handle this. He wouldn't have time to risk giving Nthanda to Ellis for safekeeping, not if the tyke was going to repeatedly disappear and reappear in random places. His eyes flickered between the approaching horde and the three questioning faces behind him. Who died and made him leader?

Odd. He'd always liked the fact people listened to him. He just didn't like being responsible for other people's lives.

"Run!" Kanda shouted, pointing back towards the tracks. Ellis, Din, and the old man took off, shouting warning to the people in the town. Unfortunately, there was still an entire other half of the town that couldn't be warned, not unless Kanda went _right then_ and shouted at every house for the people to run and get out. Of course, he could let the Akuma do the job for him, but unfortunately that included some collateral damage. He grumbled to himself belligerently as he began to run.

He probably made it about of a quarter of a mile, shouting his lungs out for the people to get out and start running before he encountered his first few Akuma. People had already started towards the tracks after hearing the machine gun fire, probably thinking the noise was guerillas on the move. He had to give them credit - they knew how to leave in a hurry.

As people flew past him carrying all their worldly belongings, Kanda noticed a large figure farther off in the background. His eyes widened as he realized that the people in the street were coming very close to being obliterated. Level Twos liked to play, and they played rough. The young man readied his sword, feeling his entire body tense for the moment when it would strike. He wouldn't know what _exactly_ that strike would be, but he at least had to be ready for it. Nthanda gurgled, almost with excitement, and Kanda had to smirk. The kid was starting to develop a taste for battle. Kanda must be rubbing off on him.

The Akuma chucked a massive whip made of metal and glass down the street, killing three people in quick succession as well as bringing down a hut. Kanda had had no time to stop it, and he realized the deaths with a wince. He jumped over the whip as it swung back his way. So this was going to be a game of Jake the Snake? So be it. Kanda could do this all night long.

The Akuma was probably ten feet tall with a body that looked like it was made out of chucked car parts. Its face was a twisted mask of glee. It giggled (ugh, the giggling type, again) as it slung the whip across the ground, breaking the leg of another running passerby. Kanda braved the whip to drag the screaming victim inside the doorway of a hut where they were unlikely to be caught in the crossfire.

"Ready, kid?" Kanda grumbled. Nthanda seemed to answer with a swift, sharp tug to his hair, and he decided to take that as a yes. He dashed out into the street, bringing his sword into a low sweeping arc. The sword whistled as it traveled through the air, and it suddenly clanged as the blade cut through the whip like scissors through paper. The Akuma gave a rather offended rant on the abuse of his weapon, and Kanda didn't wait for him to finish.

His sword ate through the Akuma's chest before he could end his rant of displeasure, and the fighter felt a satisfied thrum as the Akuma dropped to the ground. Nthanda attempted to crawl out of his place in the crook of Kanda's elbow to see the dead Akuma with curious and oddly smug expression. Kanda had to hold him firmly to keep him from falling out of his grip. The baby was almost too hot to hold at this point, and Kanda wondered if this had to do with his sudden teleportation. Dread flooded him as he realized that Nthanda might just get sick again like the last time, but before he could follow this train of thought, another Akuma sprayed a mist of bullets ahead of him.

For the next hour and a half, he fought street to street. There were probably twenty-five Akuma in all. He'd only fought about fifteen Level Two Akuma, and the other ten had been regular Level Ones that took about five seconds to get rid of. It was notable, though, that it was a little harder than usual to fight considering he was swinging one-handed. That wasn't to say that he was outclassed - Kanda could easily beat Level Ones and Twos with one hand preoccupied, but carrying around a baby, rather than having him slung around his neck in a scarf, was a bit cumbersome.

Sweaty, bloody, and more than a little annoyed, Kanda surveyed the quiet streets. There were plenty of downed buildings, and he could hear the sounds of people yelling and searching for one another, but other than that the streets seemed mostly empty. Rain had begun to pitter-patter nearly thirty minutes ago, and it was starting to wash off the blood. Nthanda sucked on his thumb and tranquilly sat in the crook of Kanda's home as if he was perfectly at home there. The kid really _had_ gotten used to battle. It used to be that he'd scream and cry like it was the end of the world. Humans could get used to anything, given time.

"Tired yet?" Kanda asked Nthanda, and the boy ignored him to squirm while grumbling in a rather annoyed tone. Suddenly, a noise caught Kanda's attention. He frowned for all of a moment -

Kanda was thrown down the street as a massive blast of _something_ hit the street. The samurai had all of thirty seconds to curl up around the baby and shift his weight so that his crash into the cobblestones would only result in a bad case of road rash rather than a very crushed child. Kanda hastily stood as his vision swam. Contrary to popular belief, Kanda was _not_ omniscient, and he was _not_ indestructible. He just happened to be rather... stubborn. It took longer than most thought for him to get back up after a rather harrowing hit. That had definitely counted as a harrowing hit.

A Level Three walked down the street rather nonchalantly, every building on that street in ruins. It must have detonated some sort of high-energy blast, probably from one of the nodules on its arms. Kanda took note that there were five of them, and one of the spaces was empty. As he gathered his wits, the empty space was beginning to fill with a black substance, becoming another nodule. Kanda's eyes flickered to the helmet of the Akuma, staring into the eye holes. A deep, almost dark light shone from within.

Allen said that souls of the dead were trapped by the Earl and used to power the machines. Standing here, panting and half-way confused, he could believe that. Those eyes looked hungry, and underneath the hunger he could see a buried pain.

Those eyes looked like a mirror of his own. Hungry and pained.

"Why, hello Exorcist," the Akuma said. Kanda immediately hated the high-born English accent. It definitely reminded him of a certain Exorcist whom he wouldn't mind stabbing... That just made it easier to kill. The Exorcist's lip curled, and he didn't deign to answer. Instead, he shifted a rather unhappy, screaming Nthanda to his hip as the rain washed off the blood from his shirt and his face. His arm was already locked around the baby, not so hard as to crush him yet just enough to keep the baby from flying out of his grip if he took a lightning dash.

The Akuma didn't wait. It flew towards him, and Kanda blocked with a swift sweep to the left. The Akuma swung an arm, and Kanda shifted his head to the right to miss the punch. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the nodes closest to his head glow, and his eyes widened as he realized he'd fallen for a trap.

He was thrown to the left as his head took the brunt of the blast. If Nthanda hadn't been to his right, he would've killed him. Kanda felt animal-like panic grip him as he realized that this was getting too dangerous. He couldn't just continue fighting with Nthanda trapped on one arm and his other arm preoccupied with blocking. He couldn't hardly get a cut in edgewise!

This blow hadn't been nearly as bad as the previous one. Kanda had only been knocked over rather than thrown so hard that his feet left the ground. He'd been able to keep his feet under him, and he used his momentum to propel him through the rubble to his left and into the next street. He ran back down this street, hiding behind one of the huts that were still standing.

He was very close to the doctor's hut. Perhaps he could run there before the Akuma took notice of his position and drop Kanda off with Vanya. As incapacitated as she was, she was probably better defense than leaving Nthanda in the open. Nthanda had ceased crying, merely hiccuping now and again. The baby had tear tracks down his dirty face, and Kanda knew he couldn't just keep throwing the kid in danger like this. Then again, the baby _attracted_ danger, but...

Kanda took a running lead down the street, turning down several more demolished streets, and he skidded to a stop in front of the doctor's hut near the tracks. He barreled into the house. Vanya was still lying there, forehead covered in beads of sweat. Her face contorted as pain took hold of her, and she turned her head at the sound of Kanda's hurried footsteps. Her eyes cracked open, and she looked up at him with a look of distrust. Well, he _was_ covered in blood and carrying a sword.

He placed Nthanda down between her and the wall. Nthanda looked up at him almost forlornly, and he reached for Kanda. The samurai felt a strange tugging sensation somewhere immaterial, but he had no time to think about it.

"Take care of him while I'm gone," he ordered. Vanya panted, and she curled up around the baby. It was obvious she didn't think that she would survive as she tucked the screaming child in the curve of her body. Her body was tense, and her bandages were already bloody again. She wasn't even going to bother to fight. All she could do was protect the target.

"Go," she said. In that moment, he hated her suddenly fatalistic tone, but they were wasting time. Kanda ran back outside, stopping in the middle of the street. His thoughts cycled through several of his default questions, such as exits, entrances, possible hide-outs, and angles of fire. These cycles of queries were intermittently interrupted by other thoughts, such as the amount of civilians still running through the streets of the outpost and whether Din and Ellis had made it out. Nevertheless, his mind stayed on task as he tried to come up with some sort of game plan. His grip tightened, and he felt strangely naked without Nthanda. The baby had practically become part of his fighting style by now.

The samurai heard the familiar crunch of feet on rubble, and he raised his sword to block a nodule that was flying towards him. It exploded on impact with the flat of the blade, and Kanda was again blown back. Part of his skin crumbled to char, and he winced as he felt the top layer of his epidermis take a beating. The Akuma advanced, and Kanda entered a deadly dance of _parry, slash, block, duck, dodge._ Every nodule the Akuma used seemed to grow stronger as the fighting continued, and Kanda realized that the Akuma was pushing him back towards the doctor's hut. His goal wasn't just simple human extermination - he had a goal in mind.

Kanda entrapped the Akuma in a grinding block that halted the Akuma's push forward. Kanda hissed, "What are you after?" The Akuma attempted a swift hook to Kanda's abdomen, but the samurai spun out of the block with an economic swipe at the Akuma's forearm, deftly cutting off a node. It flew away, and it hit a building with a rocking explosion. The Akuma slapped a hand over the empty space, and it glared.

"You'll pay for that. Those are difficult to regenerate," it grumbled irately, and Kanda spit.

"Make me," he answered childishly. Again, the dance of battle took them over as Kanda single-mindedly pushed the Akuma back down the street away from the doctor's hut. Kanda couldn't just bail out in this case. He _had_ to fight because this Akuma was not going to follow him. It'd take off after the defenseless woman and child in that building behind him, and Kanda would have blood on his hands. He winced as he wondered how many other people had died due to his neglect. Come to think of it, not many. Perhaps Kanda's bloodlust had an actual purpose.

Suddenly, Kanda was aware of a sharp pain. He looked down at the source of the pain, and he found a node clinging to his shirt. His eyes widened as it extended legs and dug them into his skin, effectively pinning itself to his side. He immediately chopped off the offending node with a flick of his wrist, taking a good chunk of flesh with it, and a rain of blood waterfalled over his pants. He let out a low grunt of pain as he flipped the node towards the street. Like the others, it exploded upon impact with the hard ground, and Kanda idly wondered why it hadn't immediately detonated while attached to him.

The answer came when a hand grasped around his neck and shoved him face-first into a wall. He screamed as the hand dug into his neck, breaking the skin and chewing down through the meat. He scrabbled to reach his sword, but it had fallen at his feet. He pushed against the hand, but his strength was flagging.

He wasn't indestructible... He wasn't omniscient... And he wasn't immortal either.

"Ah, Exorcist. I've heard about you. I've heard about just how strong you are. I've heard about how fast you are. I've studied you for some time, especially after you killed my dear comrade back at the train station. You've been a little thorn in my party's side for quite a while. Kanda Yu, correct?" The Akuma's civilized accent was a dark irony with the brutal treatment the Akuma was doling out. Kanda could feel the fingers tightening, creating ruts in his flesh, and he knew it would be an absolute _pain_ when the holes finally grew back in.

"And you know what? I've had fun with you, too. I'm sort of sad to see you go, honestly. But, orders are orders. If I don't get rid of you, I'll never get rid of the little tyke either. And we can't have that, can we?" the Akuma said silkily, and it removed a single node from its arm. It clicked a button on the top of the node, and Kanda felt a searing pain in his side as it was jammed into the wound. He screamed as the Akuma shoved it for good measure.

"This will detonate in a matter of seconds after I let go of you. Do try to stay alive long enough to watch the execution. You've never lived until you've witnessed a good baby bashing," the Akuma said, and Kanda was suddenly released. Kanda stayed propped on his knees, struggling to remove the bomb inside of his wound and failing. He looked back in horror as he saw the Akuma calmly stroll up to the house and knock on the door.

Intense pain, after that. All he could feel was an intense burning sensation. His vision swam as he realized he was lying on the ground now. Blood was in his nose. His ears were leaking fluid, and his head was wet with rain. His body was a broken machine, struggling to work. Part of his mind remained clinical as the rest of him clumsily fought for reason. The bomb had detonated from inside of him, and now... Oh, God, he didn't want to see what was wrong with him. He didn't want to look. All he needed to do was get up... he just had to get up...

"Vanya..." he gasped, knowing she couldn't possibly hear him. _Don't answer the door. Don't answer the door. Stay inside and_ ** _don't you dare open that door -_**

The door remained shut fast. The Akuma, giving the air of being peeved, blasted the door to splinters, and Kanda tried to stand. He slipped on the slick ground, and he fell heavily on his uninjured side. He rolled onto his stomach, breathing heavily as he blearily watched the Akuma step foot through the threshold.

In that moment, he knew that he had failed. A great despair crossed over him as he fought to stand back up. He managed to stay on his feet, but every step he took was torture, and every beat of his heart kept the tempo for a symphony of agonies. His hand shook as he balled it into a fist, ready to fight the Akuma inside barehanded if it meant completing his mission.

And, just like that, the building was suddenly engulfed in black flames, and the Akuma was ejected from the door like a bullet from a gun.

Kanda stood there, shocked, as the building slowly began to crumble in black-and-white relief, bits of color seeping where the flames were not absolute. Kanda shook, wondering if this was some sort of new trick of the Level Three, but it, too, was on fire. It screamed obscenities as it attempted to put out the flames, and Kanda could only scoff distantly. _Serves it right._

As if there was no end to the shockers, Vanya stepped out of the burning building unharmed, her skin completely blackened as if she'd been dipped in ink. Her eyes stood out in bright relief, the whites of her eyes outlining circles of old blood. In her arms, Nthanda clung unaffected, and Kanda struggled to understand what he was seeing. CROW weren't this powerful. CROW didn't _deal_ with this sort of magic. This stank of black, dark spellwork-

-but they were willing to fuse Akuma with CROW, so who says black magic is out of the picture?

Vanya calmly walked across the street, the color of her skin seeming to drain the surrounding light like a black hole. She was a walking abomination. At her breast, Nthanda screeched his little lungs out, no doubt sensitive to the very nature of the magic that influenced Vanya. The scar behind her ear seemed to glow with a bright, bloody red light, and Kanda could only stare as she picked up the Level Three by the scruff of its neck. The Level Three actually managed to punch her in the face, causing her neck to audibly snap, but she seemed completely unfazed as her neck popped back into place, and she stared at the Level Three with a slight smile and endless eyes.

_"Dasvidanya,"_ she said, just loud enough for Kanda to hear as he began to stumble towards the pair. Her words seem to echo through the air, ingraining themselves in its medium and burrowing into Kanda's ears. She kissed the struggling, screaming Akuma's forehead, and the Akuma screamed as black flames began to eat it, swallowing it whole from the point of contact. Within seconds, it was nothing but a charred skeleton, the soul, no doubt, completely destroyed by the tainted spell that had worked itself upon the monster.

By this time, Kanda was only a few feet away, and he pointed his sword at Vanya, idly realizing it _might_ be a bad idea to point a weapon at a woman who could probably kill with a touch. Nevertheless, he leveled the katana at the CROW, practically having to dip the sword down to waist height in order to aim the point at her jugular.

"Put... the baby... down," Kanda ground out between clenched teeth. His wound was deep, but it would heal. It would take a while longer than normal, but he would survive. He could still take her out, if he really needed to... hopefully. He wasn't doing so hot right now. Internally, he begged that she'd listen. He didn't have the energy and ability to kill her without possibly maiming Nthanda as well. The baby was still wailing away, stretching his arms towards Kanda. The rain continued to come down, harder now than before. The small woman regarded Kanda with a stare, and he felt his bones chill to ice. That stare was not of the woman he'd traveled with. That stare was from something... older. Impossibly older.

She acquiesced, and Nthanda crawled as fast as he could manage for Kanda's legs. The baby clung to Kanda's pants, crying still as he looked up at Vanya. The blackened woman continued to stare, and the color began to drain from her body. The black gave way to stark white, and as the transformation took over, Vanya seemed to return. Her eyes widened, and she gasped when all the color had leached from her body. She fell to her knees, her side and arm still pulped but significantly better than before. Her breathing gasped in and out as if she'd been drowning, and Kanda didn't hesitate.

He gripped her by the neck and pulled her face to look up at him, and he said, "What was that? TELL ME!" He was surprised he could still possess such volume of voice given the state of his diaphragm. It must be shredded by now. The edge of Mugen pressed lightly on the skin of her neck, its sharp edge making a microscopic red line as it cut through skin. Vanya shook like a leaf, and her training finally set in as she answered, "I-I do not know. Please believe me when I say that I do not know." Kanda stared into her eyes, noting the panic and disarray. She was telling the truth.

He lowered his sword, the tip dragging on the ground, and Nthanda made grabby motions. Listlessly, Kanda tried to bend down to pick him up, but in doing so, he ended up losing his balance and falling over. Nthanda lost his balance as soon as Kanda did, and he cried as he crawled over the torn road to the man who'd become his caretaker. Almost mechanically, Kanda held him in his lap, staring down at the baby's head as Nthanda gripped his blood-soaked shirt. Kanda realized he was shivering, and everything felt strangely out of focus.

"Kanda...? Kanda, can you hear me? Kanda!" Vanya's voice faded in and out of Kanda's ears, and all he wanted in that moment was to go to sleep and stay asleep. He was so tired. Before he knew it, Ellis and Din were wavering in and out of his vision, black dots beginning to create negative spaces in his sight. He frowned as he realized that they were trying to carry him, but he couldn't feel a thing. Their lips moved, but he didn't know what they were trying to say to him. Their words were falling on deaf ears.

Finally, Kanda lost all consciousness as the trio carrying him and his charge left a blood trail behind them.

* * *

His eyes flashed open, and he knew it was too soon for him to be awake. He felt absolutely no pain, and he was clean. There were sheets over him, and he was in some sort of old house. Intuition told him that this place... wasn't really _here,_ per se. It was... intangible. Fictitious.

It was a nice place, though, as unreal as it was. Outside the window, he could see gentle rolling fields outlined by a dusky sky. It actually reminded him of some of the places he'd been in the South when he'd gone to America for a mission -

"I'd always wanted to go to America, y'know," a voice said, and Kanda turned to look towards its owner. The woman was dark skinned, so dark as to almost be completely black. Her eyes stood out, a beautiful orange-brown color directed toward the open fields. She was wearing a tattered dress with an apron, and her hair was bound back in a customary bun. She leaned against a wall with what seemed to be stars in her eyes. She brushed back a strand of hair, her proud jaw outlined by fading light.

The voice was familiar. She must be Nthanda's mother, but what was she doing here?

"I kinda stole a memory offa ya. About the South," she said sheepishly, shrugging. She had a thick accent, but it wasn't like Din's, with fluting tones and thrown in clicks here and there. Hers was definitely tinged with a more European edge. In this place, she looked so much calmer than how she sounded. Perhaps she'd mellowed out a bit. She was a pretty woman, all in all. Too bad she was dead.

"What are you doing here? What am _I_ doing here?" Kanda asked, getting out of bed. He was wearing his Exorcist uniform, an odd thing to wake up in. He stood awkwardly, smoothing out ever-present wrinkles. He'd never done laundry, anyways, so it wasn't a surprise that even here his uniform was rumpled.

"You? Well, I wanted to wait until you were asleep, but that didn't happen. I decided to take the bull by the horns, y'know? Right now, you're up here," she said, tapping her temple. Kanda blinked. He was in his own head? How did that make sense? This was one bizarre dream.

"I just wanted to say thank you before I left," she said, looking at him. The two regarded each other, a twenty-something South African woman and an eighteen year old Japanese Exorcist. This was the first time he'd ever seen her, and he could see little resemblance between her and her baby. He processed her words.

...Leaving? What was this about leaving?

"I've stayed here too long, hon. I only got to stay cuz baby Nthandanaikanatae has that effect. He can keep the dead, for a little while, but I gotta go back. My work is done. And... I trust you," the woman said, turning away. Kanda noticed that she had valises next to her feet. He felt a settling dread overcome him. He'd noticed her increasing silence. Had she been attempting to distance herself from them both? What would he do without her constant nagging? What if he ever lost Ellis or Din? How was he going to take care of Nthanda without his mother guiding him?

"You'll do fine, I know you will. You've _been_ doing fine. Trust yourself, honey, you don't give yourself enough credit," the woman said, chuckling. Suddenly, she looked pensive.

"Where are you going?" Kanda asked, and she shrugged.

"Dunno. Where _do_ you go when you die? Ain't never been anyone come back before to tell us," she sighed. Kanda looked away. He remembered dying... but not being dead. It was a rather odd predicament.

"Well, I've stayed too long already. Gotta be headin' off. You's gonna wake soon, anyways," Nthanda's mother sighed, picking up the valises at her sides. They were covered with stamps, no doubt places she'd either been to in life or had wanted to go to while alive. The suit cases looked fairly new, as if they hadn't been used very often, and the stamps were few. Her world had been small.

Kanda watched her head towards the door, and he felt a sudden urge. He needed to know something.

"Wait!" Kanda called out, and, just as she was about to step outside through a door to the fields bathed in gold, she turned halfway to look at him. Her face was in profile as the last day's light seemed to produce a halo around her head. Her eyes were bright with an ethereal quality, and Kanda felt constricted, as if he were losing something important.

"I don't know your name," he said strongly. The woman's face flickered with an odd expression before turning to one of delight.

"Nobody ever ask me my name 'fore," she said quietly. Kanda felt apprehension as she seemed to consider this request. The light was dying, and she was beginning to fade. For quite a while he was afraid she'd never answer and soon she'd disappear. For whatever reason, he felt he should know who she was, if only so he could tell Nthanda when he was older. Kanda had never known a mother or father. It was hard to know that one could no longer remember the name of the people one first loves the most.

Finally, the woman tilted her head to the side, and her smile became deep. The fields were growing dark behind her, and twilight was falling. This was her last chance.

"Name's Alitash," she said, and she stepped foot outside. In that moment, the world brightened to the point of blindness, then was curtained in black to cover her passing from this world to the next, and

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it's been a while since my last upload! Seeing as it's been a while, I wanted to ask a few questions about the story overall.   
> Are you enjoying the story? Does it make you laugh or does it make you cry? Are there equal parts of both? Do you think the characters are true to their actual counterparts? Do you enjoy the interactions between the canon character and the canon foreigners? What sort of things could have been done better?


	8. Family Ties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trains are a great place for introspection.

When one wakes the first sense to be realized out of all is that of sound. Touch lags behind, taste is slow to arouse, and smell drags its feet while sight lugs about, but sound is the foremost runner in the race to be known when one is removed from the mists of sleep. This being so, the first thing Kanda noticed upon returning to the world of the living (or mostly living, in his case) was the sound of clacking wheels. True to their nature, touch scrambled to follow. He was wearing nothing more than a pair of briefs and a mummy's worth of bandages around his waist and neck while completely covered by a thick, itchy wool blanket. His mouth felt thick and tasted of musty old things along with a hint of something else. He could smell metal and dust, the type of dust that arises from a thick dirt plain and clogs every opening and pore. Finally, he opened his eyes.

Just as he had deduced in those few seconds upon waking, he confirmed that he was on a train, and a rather rickety train at that. There were several large crates, and he sighed. Of all the places they could've put him, they had to stick him in the cargo hold of the stupid metal monster. He sat up, feeling awfully stiff, and he wondered just what exactly had happened to him. Most of Kanda's memory was fuzzy, though a lot of it was slowly filtering into his conscious mind. His joints creaked like rusted hinges as he tried to stand, finally giving up as the jolting train practically knocked him over time after time. It seemed that Kanda just had bad luck when it came to standing these past few hours or so. After his third attempt at remaining upright, the door to the car opened.

Kanda immediately grabbed for his sword, only to realize that not only was it missing but that he had no sword belt, or pants, or shirt, or... well, anything besides the briefs and bandages. Despite the imagery, he was anything but attractive - he was covered in sawdust, caked blood, and dirt. He probably looked like he'd crawled out of the insane asylum and into a trash can next to a carpentry.

Vanya stared at him rather incredulously before recovering. Nthanda, sleeping in her arms, suddenly stirred and immediately began to babble and lean towards the filthy swordsman. Vanya pulled him back, clucking at him in Russian.

"Nyet, nyet, nyet," she said, wagging a finger at him. Nthanda grabbed the finger in response and seemed to argue angrily in response, and Vanya cracked a very small, very fragile smile. She looked up at Kanda, and she said, "I see you hef risen. I vas coming to check if your fever hed come back." Kanda shifted on the floor, suddenly awkward at being so... unclothed around a person of the opposite gender. Usually, these sorts of social nuances bothered him little ; this was a new development, and all he could do was act like it was normal.

"How long was I unconscious?" Kanda asked gruffly, his voice scratchy from neglect. It even hurt to talk. He winced as his sides twinged as he shifted again, pulling the blanket over his legs. Where were his clothes? What sort of person just takes off your clothes and, worse, doesn't put them back on? Vanya sat down on a crate next to Kanda, sitting over him, and he felt vaguely uncomfortable with her being higher than he was. She bounced Nthanda on her leg, hardly having to work at it as the train bounced along the track.

"Nearly two days. Ve vere beginning to vorry you vould never vake up," Vanya said, glancing at Kanda. Her eyes were steely, completely shielded of all emotion or inflection. It was like staring into an empty doll. A gap in the armor appeared, though, as Nthanda yanked on a piece of her hair that had escaped its confines in her bobby pins, and she smiled again, that brittle grin.

"Glad to see you avake. Auntie Va-va can actually sleep. He has been an utter terror at night, crying and crying for you. I had to sleep there," she said, pointing past him to a spot between the crates nearly two feet away. Kanda didn't know how to feel about that either - that was the closest he'd slept to another person, much less a woman, for years. In fact, he couldn't remember what it was like. He typically got a completely separate room from his partners or Finders. It was unsettling to know all this had happened while he was knocked out cold.

"Let me guess - fractured ribs, lacerations, burns, the works," Kanda muttered, gesturing to the mass of bandages around his midsection. They almost reached his chest. Vanya cocked her head to the side as she looked down at the aforementioned strips of cloth, and she said, "Yes. You were bleeding so heavily, you ruined all my good clothes. I had to tear strips from canvas and poor Missus Leverrier's petticoats." It took Kanda's brain several seconds to match Ellis' last name with her first, and he nodded wearily. Vanya suddenly sat down next to him, setting Nthanda in his lap. Though the nine-month-old didn't seem particularly _happy_ at this arrangement, the tyke wasn't unhappy either, playing with the loose strands of hair that hung over Kanda's shoulder.

Vanya immediately began to reach for the bandages at Kanda's midriff, and he instinctively put a hand out to stop her. She hesitated, looking up at him with a question in her gaze, and he hesitantly pulled back. She started to untuck and unwind the bandages, going round and round.

"You scared us, for a little vhile. Your heart stopped beating for all of five minutes, and ve began to panic a little. However, your vounds heve healed rather... nicely," she said, obviously skeptical as she looked at the source of injury.

Kanda himself was actually in disbelief as to how large a hole had been blown into him. He'd had many, many battlefield wounds, including, though obviously not limited to, having a foot long gash across his chest from shoulder to hip, electrical burns over most of his body, getting hit by a train (though that wasn't a battlefield wound, per se), and nearly having an arm lopped off. This just about took the top of the list, though, seeing as he was literally regenerating several different organs. The hole extended from the second rib from the bottom of his rib cage straight down to the hip. It was deep - in fact, it was deep enough that he could've easily hidden two or three golems inside of it. Luckily most of it was burned, so a good bit of the wound was cauterized, but there were several parts that were still glistening with blood, sinew, and freshly regenerated tissue. It was a wonder he hadn't died.

There was progress, though, from what he could see. A lot of it was new, reddish-pink flesh. It was actually rather disgusting to look at. Nthanda was suddenly interested in the large wound, and he reached out a hand to touch. Kanda gently redirected the hand away with a single, long finger, and Vanya shook her head as she pulled the baby back into her lap to keep him out of trouble. She began to apply a fresh bandage that she'd brought with her in Nthanda's diaper bag, though not before roughly cleaning out whatever debris had managed to seep in through the previous layer of bandage. Kanda hissed with pain, recoiling slightly at the sting of the water and cotton brushing against the raw wound. Vanya gripped his arm to keep him steady, single-mindedly tending the wound.

Kanda finally took the time to examine his traveling companion. She was haggard - a lot of her hair was disheveled. Her arm was still injured and covered with bandages along with the rest of her side, the deep layers mostly hidden by a black robe. Deep half-moons of bruised-looking flesh painted the underneath of her eyes, and her already pale skin looked paper-thin and nearly blue in the gold light drifting through the car. It appeared that she hadn't slept in days, and it made Kanda wonder how Ellis and Dingane were faring.

Those two! He'd completely forgotten about them. He hadn't even bothered to ask if they were injured or not - they'd been strong enough to direct people to lift him, after all, so they must be in sufficient shape, if not good condition. He felt slightly guilty for not thinking of them earlier, but he put the sentiment aside. His priority was to his charge and himself. Nobody else mattered. No matter what, the mission must be completed at all costs, even to the point of leaving someone behind.

Yet he'd saved the woman in front of him from perishing on a burning bridge over a ravine, and here she was, having saved his life. Perhaps there was some merit to this 'altruism' Allen was always trying to beat into him.

The swordsman lifted his arms slightly to accommodate the new bandages being wrapped around his middle. He had several other, smaller wounds and burns, but they were almost closed and healed. Several had been stitched, no doubt done while he was unconscious and with Ellis' sewing needles to boot. He tried not to think about that too much. Despite his affinity for accumulating massive amounts of damage, Kanda didn't like needles in the least. He held a special loathing for stitches. Allowing someone to tear small holes in his flesh just to close up a bigger hole seemed somewhat absurd to him, and he'd made that known several times in doctors' offices and medics' tents. Yes, it helped heal him faster, but he couldn't stand feeling the pull of thread through his skin.

"There. All done," Vanya said, tucking the end of the bandage in. She grabbed Nthanda's diaper bag, and the little boy took the opportunity to clamber out of her lap and into Kanda's. The aforementioned Exorcist was a little bit at a loss as to what to do with Nthanda now that his mother was gone, almost lost without any of her constant nagging and guidance. Ellis was as good a source as the ghostly mother, but mothers had that... that _way_ about them when it came to their children.

He remembered when he was little that he'd feel that way towards his own mother. Technically, she hadn't been his 'mother' - she had been _his_ mother, the other one. Still, he remembered the flashes of memory that had assailed him, bits and pieces of life before the other one's death, and it always made him wonder if those were his memories now. There'd been this assurance, this complete faith, in the one who'd borne the other one. It was this concrete, solid, unshakable feeling that no matter what she'd fix things so that everything was alright. Kanda had never truly felt that firsthand. Faith was not in his nature - despite his lack of education, or lack of intelligence as some believed, Kanda was an inquisitive, skeptical person who would not - no, could not - believe something he had never experienced for himself, even if it was a memory from a past life.

"Alright, next thing," she said, finished. He frowned as she suddenly leaned in closer, and internally he suddenly panicked. What was she -! His mind went in a million directions, opting for 'back up out of there as fast as possible.' He scuttled back quickly, managing to knock himself in the head on a crate stacked up behind him. He cursed loudly as Vanya jerked back, confused, and Nthanda suddenly stood up on... certain parts of Kanda's anatomy.

Three minutes later he was still rolled up in a ball on his side, wondering what sort of sick deity would create such a massive weak spot for even the strongest man. Vanya sighed as Kanda recovered from his ordeal. Nthanda had fallen over when Kanda had immediately curled up around his offended body parts, and he'd taken a bit of a knock to the hind end. Still, he was determined to stay stoic, crawling back over to Kanda and babbling to him as he patted the swordsman's face with fat, chubby hands.

Kanda suddenly felt hands working at the bandages at his neck, and Vanya said, "I know you are hurt, but you need a bath and we're stopping in an hour. You need a doctor." Kanda scoffed. Doctors were practically useless in his case. They always asked questions he didn't have answers for (in more ways than one), and they gawked whenever he walked out of their hospitals unannounced and perfectly fine. It was annoying. But, of course, everything was annoying, so that was no surprise.

Suddenly, things were getting a little too hot in the car. It felt stifling and dirty and unpleasant. Nthanda ceased pulling on Kanda's face to look up at Vanya, who was working on Kanda's neck. He reached up towards her, and Kanda watched the little tyke with a look of curiosity. He'd missed this little guy, even if he _had_ just caused more undue pain in one instance than anyone had ever meted out to Kanda. The Exorcist poked Nthanda's stomach, and Nthanda let out a noise of ire. Kanda almost smiled, feeling the bandages suddenly come off completely. The wound was met with a splash of pain as air washed over it, and Kanda closed his eyes as Vanya's fingertips traced the raw edges. She sighed, an unknown emotion running through that single breath. Her touch was a feather over the skin, dry and fluttering. The stroking motions were almost soothing.

"Kanda... you have an infection here. In your neck. This is... is not good," Vanya stated, a strange note in her voice. Kanda opened his eyes. He couldn't see it, and perhaps that was a good thing. He began to get up, but Vanya's dry hand stayed him as she pressed against his shoulder.

"Lay here. I go to get Ellis. Perhaps she know what to do," the Russian said, her lilting accent hiding her thoughts. The warmth of her hand left behind a cool after-feeling as she got up and limped off, uneven steps shuddering Kanda's side through the train floor. Nthanda almost looked perplexed as he looked past Kanda's head. The Exorcist himself felt strange after that encounter, and he decided that it was best he just forgot about it. After all, that was what he did best when awkward things came his way - he pretended they'd never happened. He sat up and reached behind him, grabbing the diaper bag and pulling it towards him. Inside, Nthanda's drum peeked out, and he handed it to the still baby. Nthanda broke out of his trance, and he gripped the drum almost inquisitively, testing it with his fingers and gripping it as if he'd never seen the thing before. The moment passed, and he proceeded to pound on the thing with glee, though a smile didn't appear on his face. Who knew that a baby could be stoic?

Kanda thought about the ramifications of the wound in his neck. That Akuma had dug his fingers right into the side of it, narrowly missing the main artery. By all means he was lucky in that regard as well, but an infection was unheard of. He'd never had that problem, and his wounds should've healed up in the two days he'd been asleep.

Before he could think more on the subject the car door opened, and two pairs of footsteps trounced in. Kanda tried to turn his neck, but it was a pain attempting to twist around. All of a sudden, Ellis was pushing him down, and he protested loudly.

"Hey! I'm injured! Careful!" he grumbled as his cheek pressed against the metal floor. Vanya, at least, was gentle about it!

"Oh, shush your mouth. Now let Auntie Ellis take a - oh my. This _is_ rather serious, isn't it? Thank you for telling me, Vanya, just more to worry over," Ellis said, blustering around at fifty miles per hour. Vanya stood off, giving an air of bemusement despite her blank expression while Kanda sat up again. Nthanda ignored the proceedings, playing with his drum. The train suddenly gave a sharp jolt, and Ellis fell over on her rump with a swift 'oof!' Kanda took that opportunity to sit up and get out from under Ellis' domineering ministrations.

"Give me my clothes," he demanded, tired of being fussed over. He was getting awfully irritable, and he wanted to be clothed and clean. This was just insulting. He was a big boy - he could take care of himself. He didn't need them swarming him like he was some invalid in a hospice. Ellis ruffled as she huffed, "Well, alright, Mr. Knickers-In-A-Twist. I'll go and get your clothes. Don't mind the fact I haven't been asleep for more than a few hours at a time trying to take care of you. Hmph!" She left with that, slamming the door on her way out, and Kanda winced as the noise bit into his ear drum. He was beginning to foster a headache along with his other assorted aches and pains.

"Be kind, Kanda. She has been worried. We all have," Vanya said, walking over to Nthanda. She sat down stiffly with the boy, playing his drum in time with him, and Kanda felt a pang of jealousy, surprising as it was sharp. He quashed the feeling quickly, rooting it out like a weed from a garden. Attachment, feh -

Then there was that moment again. Everything _shifted._ It was like the world had suddenly moved off-kilter, where everything was the same yet in a completely different light. It was as if someone had replaced the lenses of his mind's eye with something rosy and bright, almost blinding. He felt this massive, vast _feeling_ out of nowhere, this absolute conviction in... in _something,_ and in the back of his mind it scared him. This was the feeling that had left that hole before, only now the feeling was just... bigger. Fuller. A certain knowing assailed his mind, one tinged with nostalgia as he looked at Nthanda and Vanya.

Like the last time, Vanya was no longer herself, but _that_ woman. The baby, though... the baby was familiar, too. He was another person as well. It was an overlay of a memory, one on top of the other. He was split between two people and times, and he clung to that vast feeling, scared of the hole it would leave behind when it went away.

And, in a fit of thought, he realized who he was seeing. The two before him were his family. He'd had a _family._ A... family?

In that moment, the world shattered. The image fell apart like so many shards, and the hole yawned within him. Yet, within the hole, there was a spark. It was a small spark, but it was alive and there. Kanda wasn't sure which scared him more - the fact the spark existed or that it he could easily snuff it out if he so wished.

"Kanda? Is there something the matter?" Vanya asked, snapping him out of his thoughts. Kanda, lost for words, stood up and walked out of the car, unwilling to acknowledge that at one time he may have been a father and that he may have actually once felt love.

* * *

"We be dere in t'ree days. Jus' saw Clinger's Rock, so's we near deh rivers. We need be real careful round dem rivers, cuz 'at's deh borduh. Lots a' cutthrohts 'n purse stealers 'n milit'ry. No' a fun plehce t'be for too lohng," Din said, cleaning out his phone pack. He'd been trying to get a signal for the entire two days that Kanda had been unconscious, from what the samurai had heard from Ellis. The black Finder had been tirelessly staunch in keeping his optimism high and his rifle in working order. So far they hadn't hit any problems besides a hobo who'd thought that this was _his_ train rather than a free vehicle to the populace (well, the poor populace).

Kanda nodded, helping Nthanda stand by putting out two fingers for him to hang on to as the tyke attempted to walk on his own. So far, the baby had only succeeded in falling over every few minutes, but he was steadily standing for longer and longer periods of time. His belly was full and dark, and his diaper was a new blue hanky that Kanda had found in Nthanda's bag, packed by none other than Ellis herself. Kanda had also donned a new set of clothes, his first set having been ripped to pieces in his earlier battle. His clothing cost alone was high, and he was lucky the Order bought him new outfits or else he'd be walking around stark naked.

Kanda looked over at Dingane with a touch of curiosity as Nthanda wobbled along. The Finder was an unassuming man by all accounts with a layer of outright cheer that was neither chafing nor boisterous. To be quite honest, it was refreshing to have someone around that was always smiling yet never obtrusively happy. Allen's sort of brightness was like a spotlight in comparison, practically blinding and all around annoying. Despite all this, Kanda had never once wondered about the Finder and his thoughts or his past. All he knew was that the man had joined the Order in order to pay for his sister's medical bills... or was that his mother? Kanda suddenly realized he had two different versions of the same story, and his curiosity spiked.

"Din, why _did_ you join the Order? It sure wasn't for the fringe benefits," Kanda said, snarking the last bit. Din looked up, surprised that Kanda was even talking. He looked out the side of the train car, which was pulled back and open. Green hills and lush forest flashed past the train as it trundled along the track.

"My sistuh. I tol' ye once, right?" Din said, reluctant. His hesitance was like the smell of meat to a dog, leading Kanda on towards that morsel of information he knew he was missing.

"I remember hearing it was your mother," Kanda said, leaning back against another crate. Nthanda gurgled angrily as he took another frustratingly shaky step forward. His foot slid sideways, and Kanda was swift to catch him. Din looked down into his phone case, suddenly very intent on fixing it. After several moments of silence, Din quietly said, "Well... me sistuh _is_ me mothuh. Grandpappy is me Da. T'ings... got very, very complicated." He said the last word with a deliberateness that only added to the implications. Kanda was shocked for a moment, tracing the twisted family tree in his mind. That must've meant that his sister had been... Oh.

"Is hard to 'splain in Sout' Africa. I don' like t' talk 'bout it," Din said, suddenly terse and pensive as he began to redo the wiring in his phone box. Kanda kept his eyes on Nthanda who was intent on making his first steps, albeit with help. After several minutes, Din suddenly asked, " 'n you, Boss? You got family?" Nthanda gurgled at Din, waving a hand at him as if swatting at the man. Kanda could almost imagine the kid going 'shut up! Can't you see he's helping me?' The samurai sincerely hoped the kid didn't turn into a screaming brat when he grew up. He was already powerful as it was.

"No. No family. I don't even know where I really come from," Kanda said, pulling up one of the fingers Nthanda was holding on to. The baby suddenly tilted, but he hung on tenaciously, and Kanda almost smiled. At least the tyke was a fighter.

"Ah. You orphan?" Din asked congenially. Kanda thought about it for a minute. Could he be considered an orphan? He had no parents - no true parents, anyhow. If anything, he was his own parent; his past body and mind had been completely different from who he was now, and there was hardly any connection besides the brain they now shared. His original set were long dead - he'd been in that tank for some ninety years.

"Something like that," Kanda answered vaguely. Din glanced over, eyes curious. Deciding to throw the dog a bone for once, Kanda said, "I was raised in the Order. You could say I was born there, but I didn't have parents." The black man shrugged his shoulders. His imagination could do all the rest. Ellis blustered in all of a sudden, carrying an armful of new bandages with a peeved look.

"You're lucky I like you so much. I've had to get rid of _three_ good petticoats _just_ for your bandages. A _ha!_ " She suddenly dropped all of them next to Kanda on top of a rather large blanket, and Kanda wondered if Ellis had somehow managed to nab some sort of hyperspace device to put all of her clothes, blankets, and other such things. He'd seen her pack all of two suitcases, and that was it. Where was all of this stuff coming from?

Ellis surveyed her three companions with a look of satisfaction, as if she'd accomplished something of great might. She was most definitely haggard looking - her bun was sloppy (heaven forbid!), and her clothes were wrinkled. Her eyes were bright, though, despite the added lines and dark circles. She was dirty, as dirty as the rest of them, but for some reason her demeanor gave the feeling that she was cleaner than the rest of her traveling companions. She stood next to Kanda, bending over his shoulder to see Nthanda, who was still attempting to walk.

"I see you two are getting along famously again. The both of you were sick as dogs the day we left, and I just about thought I'd die of exhaustion watching the two of you twitch and quiver. Mwa~." Kanda was immediately shocked as Ellis gave him an affectionate peck to the head, and he turned to look at her with incredulity. Even Din and Nthanda were struck dumb and paralyzed. The woman straightened up, dusting herself off rather primly before noticing that Din and Kanda were gawking as if she'd suddenly sprouted a horrific rash.

"What? You've never seen a woman before? I understand I'm a little over-buxom, but still," she said, tottering off to go and sit down next to the open door of the train to air out. Wisps of brown and gray hair danced around her lined face as she relaxed in the breeze caused by the train's passing, and Kanda scrubbed at his head where Ellis had planted her peck. The last time he'd been kissed, _Jiji_ of all people had done it, and he'd been drunk to boot so it wasn't just alcoholic, it was _sloppy._ The very memory brought shivers across Kanda's skin, and his countenance turned dark as he remembered.

For the rest of the day, and for most of the night, they took turns keeping watch and going to sleep. They passed the time talking, Kanda tending to stay out of the conversations. Just from listening he learned quite a bit. Vanya, before she'd been orphaned, had been the child of a toymaker who'd been killed in a revolution in Russia. Ellis' family, the Leverriers, were good pastry makers, and she'd caught the gene as well, making exquisite cakes and pastries. At one point, she'd even made a special cake...

"Oh, it was delightfully devilish. That woman had it coming to her. Kick _my_ dog, will you? Well, I'm sure she was _very_ surprised when she found out what _exactly_ was in that cake. I hear that cockroaches are _marvelous_ with vanilla icing, wouldn't you say, Dingane?"

"Hey, hey, mum, doncha knock deh roaches 'til ya try some o' me auntie's fried'ns, and _then_ you can complain." This brought about a raucous roar of laughter, and Kanda 'tch'ed in response with a smirk.

"Oh, does Mr. I'm-A-Silent-Git-And-I-Feel-Anti-Social have something to say?" Ellis quipped, and Din laughed with a bit of a wheeze, showing bright white teeth. Vanya lifted her eyebrows at Kanda, almost inviting him into the conversation. Nthanda sat in his lap, happily beating his drum with his pudgy hands, Kanda directing them with his own spindly fingers.

"I've got an even better one. You know what horseradish is?" Kanda said, smirk turning dangerously close to a smile. Ellis and Din seemed to lean forward in anticipation as they both nodded. Vanya rolled her eyes discreetly at their childlike enthusiasm.

"I've got a friend who's a complete idiot. He could tell you how to get to the moon, but if you stuck him in a forest by himself, he'd probably go crazy. That's just the type of guy he is, a stupid redhead," Kanda said, leaning back against a crate. He waited a few moments, milking the quiet for all it was worth as the three visibly tried to hold in their questions. Dare he say it, he was enjoying himself. He had them on a string.

"He doesn't look before he eats. He just eats. Anyhow, he dumped paint all over me one afternoon as a prank... so I got him back," Kanda said, shrugging nonchalantly. By now, the three were buzzing in their seats, waiting. Kanda leaned an elbow on his knee, resting his chin in his palm as he drummed Nthanda's drum with his fingers, Nthanda frantically trying to catch the man's spider-like digits as they passed over the tight drumskin. He kept his face carefully composed in a mask of carelessness and almost-boredom.

"I helped Jerry, the cook, in the kitchen one day, and the idiot redhead ordered dumplings... so I filled them all with wasabi horseradish sauce," Kanda said, finally giving a telling smirk. For several moments it was quiet, and then suddenly they started to laugh. It came slowly, like an onrush of water, and at last came as a massive wave of mirth.

"W-wha'd ya frien' do, M-mistuh Kanda?" Din asked through bursts of laughter. Kanda's smirk cracked wider as he said, "His face practically exploded. He fell on the floor and started crawling on the ground." The others laughed, and, to their surprise, Nthanda joined in. They all looked at Nthanda with wonder as the baby giggled, slapping his drum with renewed vigor. The four looked at each other with new eyes before resuming their chatter.

It went on like that for two more days. It would've been nice to say that their trip went on like this until their next stop. Unfortunately, it seems like Exorcists, Finders, and the like were not the type to attract such good fortune.

"Kanda... Kanda, wake up!" The samurai was standing and in a stance with Mugen in his hands within seconds as he heard someone say his name. On the floor where he'd lain down, Nthanda breathed peacefully. Kanda searched for the voice that had startled him awake. Vanya suddenly seemed to melt into the moonlight, dark hair hanging down in snarls from the braids she'd painstakingly tried to keep in order.

"We're getting closer to the border, and Din says ... Kanda, are you alright?" she asked, her empty voice suddenly spiked with concern. Kanda frowned, wondering what could be so bad as to cause concern when he noticed that the bandage around his neck was soaked and he was swaying back and forth as he stood. Vanya walked across the room, and she placed a cool, dry hand across his face and neck, frowning listlessly.

"You're very, very warm. Let me see your bandage," Vanya whispered fervently, tearing roughly at the bandage, her steady yet relentless motion showing her anxiety though her face was a mask. Kanda winced as some of the still-healing flesh was ripped away with the bandage, and he grabbed her hand instinctively, causing her to gasp as he began to crush her wrist in his grip. She let go of the bandage as he said, "I can do it myself." He reached up with his sword, sliding the blade through and cutting it off. The pieces fell around his neck and clung to the skin. Already, he could tell from the rancid stink that the wound was steadily getting worse.

"We need to get you to a doctor - wait... we're slowing down," Vanya said, noticing the sound of slowing wheels. Immediately, Kanda scooped up Nthanda and hid behind some crates. The child cried for all of a minute before Kanda put a finger to the babe's lips, signalling quiet. Nthanda had learned quickly over the past few days that this meant silence, and he fell mute. Vanya followed suit, crawling into an already opened crate and pulling the lid over her head. Kanda was too big to hide inside of a crate, and he didn't want to slip Nthanda in one alone, either. He vacillated the decision for a few more minutes before the train stopped completely. The car opened, and Kanda tensed with his sword at the ready. Humans were no match for the bite of his blade. Akuma were little more than machines to be cut down. He would be perfectly fine.

Ellis suddenly popped into a frame of moonlight, scaring the ever-lasting daylight out of him.

"Sorry, sorry - look, we need to get off the train and... oh dear, this is... this is horrible, how did this -" Kanda waved a hand to stop her from saying any more.

"Just tell me what we're doing," Kanda said tersely, grumpy from being woken up. Din slid into view as well, his rifle in his hand. Ellis looked scared and nervous, twisting a handkerchief between her fingers.

"Hiding. We're hiding. We saw militia - lots and lots of militia, all trying to hold the border. They're looking for political enemies, of which we are now one, from what the radio broadcasts have been saying," Ellis stated breathlessly. Her usually cocky and stuffy countenance was replaced with one of twitchy seriousness. She knew better than most the dangers that could befall a person out in war-torn South Africa. The train came to a full stop, and voices rang out from the ducts above. Men were negotiating with the train conductor. A single shot was heard, singing in the night air like a hawk's cry - apparently, that was the end of the negotiation.

"Forget it - I'll just carve a path out, and we'll leave," Kanda said, about to get up, but Ellis pulled him back down in his seat.

"Think about this, Kanda. How many men do you know are out there? How many can you take in your condition? Let me talk to them," Ellis whispered. Vanya suddenly poked her head out of her crate and said, "We can escape. Go out the back or the top." They fell silent, taking the option into consideration -

Suddenly, footsteps echoed through the open door of the car, and they scattered into different hiding places. Din set up his gun at the end of the car while Kanda headed towards the door with Nthanda in the crook of his arm. The baby had already fallen back to sleep, resilient to the last for that final wink. Vanya was still in her carton, probably pulling out what knives she had left. Ellis took up residence at the side of the train.

Two men stepped into the car, walking right past Kanda. They were talking to each other, some of which Din understood. Strangely enough, they were talking about their daughters... and then, suddenly, Kanda seemed to slink out of the darkness and slit both their throats in a single, quick stroke from behind. It was jarring, like watching two men on the street ruthlessly murdered in a moment. Kanda didn't seem to notice, wiping his sword on his dirty pants, pus dripping out of his wound and onto his shirt from the infected holes in his neck. He disappeared through the door, and Din tried to make sense of what he'd just seen as all three waited in anticipation.

The sound of something dropping the floor met their ears four more times before Kanda came back, stripes of blood on his pants from wiping Mugen against the fabric. There was a pained look on his face as he sheathed Mugen and looked down at the bodies. The men were armed with rifles, and Kanda took one for himself. Having a firearm was always helpful in cases where Akuma were not concerned. He motioned for the three to come out, Vanya leaving only after Din whispered the all-clear. As Din passed by, he noticed that the men on the ground were still breathing, though barely.

Somehow, Kanda had managed to slit their throats and still leave them living. They were bleeding out heavily, but given that the men were noticed in time, they could be saved. Din passed them by with an odd look, following Kanda into the second car. Likewise, the four men who'd been inspecting that car were also either knocked unconscious or slit the same way.

"There's a forest through that way. We'll use the trees as cover. They won't find us in the dark," Kanda said, panting slightly while the women gathered their things. In the moonlight, he was extremely pale. It was obvious he'd worsened significantly in the past few hours. They stolidly ignored this fact as Ellis hopped out with Nthanda in hand, Kanda coming afterwards, Din following, and then -

The train began to move forwards with a lurch, and Vanya faltered as she was startled into confusion. The other three watched in horror as she hopped out late, smashing into a tree. Her forehead made a sickening _crunch_ against the trunk, and Din ran for her as men shouted. Vanya stood up drunkenly, trying to regain her bearings through pain as Kanda and Ellis ran through the forest away from the voices and lantern-lights. Din led her away, attempting to follow the other pair of travelers by listening for their footsteps. Before long, gunshots rang out in the night as the two stumbled after the four, catching up at last.

Kanda and Vanya fell in step with each other as Din helped Ellis along. Ellis passed Nthanda to the swordsman, hoping that the faster, lighter man would have a better chance of running off with the babe should the worst happen. The shots were getting closer, and one of them even brushed close enough to put a piece of buckshot into one of Ellis' valises. Suddenly, they came upon a steep incline along the edge of a high creek, and all four of them fell in the dark, rolling down the hill. Suddenly, they were separated, Ellis rolling the farthest away, and Din headed straight for the water. Vanya hit yet another tree sideways, knocking the breath out of her lungs. Kanda barely managed to protect Nthanda, the baby finally waking up with a slight whimper as Kanda stopped in a pile of pine needles and dirt.

Above, he could hear the sounds of people, gunshots continuing. He couldn't make out where his other compatriots were, and a headache was beginning to cloud over him, his face flushing with fever. His infection was really setting in. His body had fought it off as well as it could, but with how hard he'd been pushed for the past few days it was failing on him. He panted, sliding down the incline until his feet hit the water, and he began to follow it down. He found a large gathering of slab-like rocks, and he wedged himself in between two of them, barely able to keep his and the baby's head above the water. The creek flowed against his clothes and threatened to take him away. Thankfully it was cool - he felt as if his body were alternating between a burning furnace and an icy pit. His eyes suddenly began to close as his hands gripped Nthanda, drifting into a fever dream.

* * *

"Al...ma...?" Kanda frowned pensively, feeling out of sorts and distant. The world around him seemed to vibrate with an annoying vivaciousness. Trees circled overhead like hawks, the world swimming in light, greenness, and glare. Overhead, he could see somebody, but the face was out of focus, like someone had distorted his vision. The trees seemed to switch between pillars of concrete and friezes back to woody trunks. His body felt cold, almost like he was in water again when he'd first come out of that pool. He reached up a hand to touch the face, hoping to get a better idea of who was standing over him. His fingers met skin, but he could glean no information.

"What... are... are you... do...ing...?"

Something was placed over his skin, cool to the touch, but so vague in its sense that he hardly noticed its presence. His mind scattered at every thought, a school of bright silver fish fleeing before a shark of sensation. A voice was in his ear, but, like the face, he couldn't make it out. First, a fluting alto, the next a whispering tenor at his side, reminding him of people he didn't know or care to know. Things danced in his vision, things he didn't understand. After a while, those visions left him and the face came back to take their place.

The face dripped into focus, the features melding together and then splitting apart. A scar over the nose at first, but then a smooth, small freckled nose. Eyes of brightest brown, and then old blood. Dark hair, always the same yet of different style, kept flipping back and forth in the light breeze, and something was lifted off of him. A great weight suddenly disappeared from his chest, and the figure stood up with something in its arms. Feeling abject panic, Kanda tried to get up, roaring at the figure as he reached for the precious thing that had been taken. That thing, the thing he didn't know he had, was important. He wasn't sure how, but it was and he would go through hell and back to keep it.

Hands gripped him and held him down, a massive weight on his stomach as he struggled against a black figure that smelled like blood and death. Fear sank its teeth into his mind, and he flailed as he felt the smothering touch. He screamed incomprehensible things, flinging himself against that death-being which had taken whatever precious thing he'd had. His body bucked and twisted underneath the smell of decay and flesh, a monstrous visage swimming in his vision. He reached for his sword, knowing that if he had that he could cut anything in the world, even Death himself. Nothing could touch him. No one would have to die any more. No, no one would have to die... if he could just... kill Death -

"Kanda... Kanda, quiet... quiet, please, be quiet..." a voice pleaded in his ear, struggling. It managed to break through the haze, beating off the panic with a massive stick of gentle calm. His breathing slowed as something stroked the side of his face, dry skin meeting wet skin. He stopped flailing, focusing on the voice that was becoming an anchor in his dizzy world.

"Quiet... good, quiet... just quiet..." The world tilted over him again, the trees landing like so many pigeons, and the sky turning over as a blanket flipping over does. Exhausted, he lay his head back, letting the earth roll over and bury him.


	9. Infection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never leave wounds untended.

Kanda stared at the ceiling, realizing he was awake very slowly. He took a deep breath as he gathered his thoughts, wondering idly whether he was alive or dead. He'd been in and out of consciousness for a long time, though for how long he wasn't sure. He could hear someone speaking softly in a language he didn't understand, and he squeezed his eyes shut as a wave of pain washed over his head. He felt like a gnome was tap-dancing on the inside of his skull. He turned his head towards the voice, taking in surroundings as he did. He was painfully aware of just how vulnerable he was right now, prostrate and injured.

He was on a bed in a room that was, at most, only ten by ten feet. There was a chair, a nightstand, and plenty of suitcases littering the ground. The walls were wood paneled, there was a single window with a minuscule balcony, and the floor was covered by a very threadbare carpet. His sword was laying against a wall, propped up by Din's phone pack. Listlessly, he dragged his eyes over to the chair next to the bed where Vanya was sitting, holding Nthanda as he fell asleep against her chest. She was speaking in a tone he'd never heard her use before, a deliberate and slow diction that held tiny notes of inflection and differentiation. Even though he had no idea what she was saying, he could understand that she was telling a story to the babe as he drifted off. Now knowing he was in no immediate danger and that his weapon was secure, Kanda let his body relax. Indeed, he hadn't even realized that he'd tensed to begin with.

When Vanya had finished, Kanda croaked, "Great. Now translate to English." Vanya looked up, her empty face giving the impression of surprise without the actual expression. She put away the brittle smile she'd had on, and she looked away from him.

"Aunt Va-va should sleep instead. It is late," she said. What she told him was true - the world outside was fading into dusk, and it would soon be time for her to light a lantern. Kanda felt vaguely disoriented as he sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes as his brain tried to push its way out of his skull sockets. He blinked several times as his eyes adjusted to the dark room, and Vanya went to light a candle, laying Nthanda down in the padded chair she'd formerly occupied. He was sound asleep now, the circle on his chest hidden by a small nightie he now wore. Kanda looked the baby over, mostly from habit, and was relieved to see that he was in, more or less, good shape.

Now, he looked to Vanya, who was lit by the glow of the candle. As was his wont, he looked her over, too, but for very different reasons. While he may look on Nthanda to be sure the child was fine, he looked at Vanya as he would an adversary, cataloging wounds and weaknesses almost by intuition. A gash stood out against her forehead where she'd slammed into that tree. There was some bruising around on part of her eye from some other encounter. Her arm was most definitely not healed yet, as it was bandaged heavily. Her side was also padded to within an inch of her life, and her leg was banged up. It would be a long while before the CROW would be in top fighting condition. For some reason, that gave Kanda a bit of satisfaction as well as worry. He couldn't deny she'd been a help, but he also couldn't deny that any strike against a CROW was good in his book.

Suddenly, his gaze turned from noticing her weaknesses to viewing her wholly. Hair was a mess, face was drawn, eyes were tired, hands shook. She was in worse shape than he was.

"Where are we?" Kanda asked, running a hand through his hair. He made a face as he realized that his hair was in a state of terrible disrepair. Sand, mud, all sorts of gunk were stuck in the strands, and he immediately felt disgusting. Kanda was actually a very prim man, and he didn't like things to be out of order. He could take his clothes being rumpled, going without a bath for a few days, and having his suitcase a little bit disorganized, but his hair was so long that if he left it for too long, it would tangle and immediately become a hassle.

"We are past the South African border, right into the English Protectorate. We're staying in a settlement called Lobatse," she answered, binding her hair back restlessly. There was another pause as Kanda thought about where that put us on their journey.

"What was that story about? The one you were telling Nthanda?" Kanda asked out of curiosity. Rarely did something pique his interest, but this had struck a chord. Not only that, but he had nothing better to do. While waiting for an answer, he categorized all his aches and pains, noting that his neck was killing him and his side was still in sorry condition, though significantly better than it had been before. Vanya contemplated his question with a hesitant stare before she walked back to her chair and picked up Nthanda gently. She cradled him while picking up a series of jars and cork board and setting them all on the nightstand. Kanda stared at the bugs within the jars, slightly unsettled that they were mostly still besides the twitch of a leg or an antennae.

"I was telling him a story of Baba Yaga," Vanya said calmly, picking up a pin from the cork board and choosing a small glass jar with its tiny, arthropod prisoner. Slowly, carefully she extracted the contents, a beetle of some sort, and placed it against the cork board. This one must be a new one - it didn't have any other pinned insects. Kanda watched, vaguely interested and disgusted. Why anyone would want to keep dead bugs was beyond him.

"Baba Yaga?" he asked. With a swift jab, Vanya speared straight through the beetle, expertly doing it fast enough to keep from cracking its outer shell. It splayed its legs in its death throes, squirming momentarily before suddenly lapsing into stillness. Vanya looked up at Kanda, and he knew that she was taking in his reaction. He showed no outward feeling, having played this game for longer than he'd like to say. She looked down again, shifting Nthanda in the crook of her arm as she readied another pin for its next victim.

"Yes. Baba Yaga. A folk tale, from Russia. She is an old woman, old as the mountains, old enough to remember when the sun was born. She is wise but finicky, and she would soon as help you as eat you. She flies around on this old mortar while using the pestle to steer and swinging a silver birch broom behind her to sweep away her tracks. I remember my father telling me stories about her, that she was not always good, not always bad. Just as most people are not good, not bad, just... them," she said quietly. She stabbed through another insect, this one a bright, iridescent moth. It didn't not so much as squirm, probably having already died. Quietly, she examined her handiwork, and she said, "Why do you ask of the story?" In response, Kanda shrugged.

"What else can I do?" Kanda asked. He stared at the far wall, wondering where his other two traveling companions could be. Crossing his legs, he took a deep breath and attempted to clear his mind. He felt sick to his stomach and terribly ill, and he felt like he couldn't think straight.

"Where are Din and Ellis?" he finally asked. She'd moved on to the next three insects, and her jars were running out. Pretty soon she'd have to go out and find more bugs. What were special about these things, anyways? She acted as if she were doing some sort of duty rather than a hobby. He found it strangely unsettling. In a way, he could actually empathize with those bugs, and maybe that's what made him feel so uneasy watching her pin them to the board.

"Out. They should be back soon," Vanya responded tersely. She brushed back her hair, and the seal scar she had on her neck winked in the dying light. Kanda swung his legs over the edge of the bed, unsteadily standing up. He tottered towards what he thought was the bathroom, and he took an extra candle before going in. After he'd done what he needed to, which was unload probably three days worth of waste, he stared into the mirror. The candle threw light against him in an eerie manner, highlighting the hollows in his face so he resembled a death's head, and he inspected the gash in his neck.

It had been covered with another layer of dressing and bandages. Slowly, he unwound them, wincing at the soreness in his back and shoulders. Just about all of him felt sore, and he tried to remember what had happened to him. He knew that he'd fallen off the train, rolled down an embankment, and landed in a river. After that, things got very... fuzzy. He also remembered some sort of death being trying to smother him, but he was going to attribute that to a fever. Was that what had happened to him? He'd gotten sick? Of course, that sounded preposterous. He didn't get sick. If anything, he beat sick's sorry hide until it ran away for its mother with its tail between its legs.

Never the less, he could feel the aftereffects of fever. He himself had never had a fever before (and indeed, he absolutely loathed that new experience), but he'd seen Lavi once suffer from a terrifically heinous bout of malaria in Cambodia. At first, Kanda had had no idea what to do seeing as the two of them had been alone, and Lavi had steadily gotten worse through their trek. Kanda sniffed derisively to himself as he remember the idiot redhead babbled about the different women in his life at the time - none of whom Kanda knew or cared to know. He had to sit there for nearly five hours wondering when the guy would shut up, only to panic when he did shut up and almost stop breathing.

Suddenly, the gash came into view, and Kanda was immediately stunned. The wound still hadn't healed, but it was no longer full of pus or bleeding. If anything, it had mostly started to grow back over, but it seemed that there was a blockage of some sort that was preventing the gash from closing up completely. Kanda knew that, despite his fast healing rate, he would end up with a rather nasty scar. He hated scars. They were uncomfortable and ugly. Most people didn't realize this, but Kanda was rather vain about his appearance, perhaps even more so than Lavi or Allen. It was not in his best interest to be marred. At the least, he hoped it faded to a silver scar rather than a puckered, nasty purple line.

There was a knock on the door, and Vanya asked, "Kanda? Are you alright?" Kanda rolled his eyes, shifting from foot to foot restlessly. He threw open the door with a glare, and Vanya stood there, shocked. They were a mere two inches from each other, nearly nose to nose, and he said, "Do you mind? I'm busy." Vanya's eyes turned steely, and she crossed her arms over her chest indignantly.

"I need to look at your wound. If I don't clean it out, it will get infected again, and that is a disgusting, messy situation I am not willing to be in again," she retorted, her thick accent rolling her words into strange sounds. Kanda gave his usual answer, a 'tch', but he was surprised to find himself being led to the bed. Automatically becoming awkward and unwilling, he resisted by digging his heels in the floor. Vanya stared at him as if he were some sort of idiot, and she said, "Well? Come here, I do not bite. I promise not to pin you to the bed." For a moment, Kanda was taken aback by the statement before realizing she meant a literal pin when she picked up one of the instruments she used to stick bugs to her cork board and showed it to him by twisting it between her fingers. Disoriented by her sudden bout of actual emotion, he reluctantly allowed himself to be poked and prodded into the correct position, almost nose to wall next to the window.

Light filtered through from the moon shining overhead. He hadn't realized just how long he'd been in the bathroom, inspecting that wound. Vanya's touch was light and feathery, as always, and he found himself uncomfortably soothed by the sensation. He had never been fond of people touching him - it was one of the reason he hated doctors so much. Nthanda was becoming an obvious exception considering Kanda's new role as caregiver, and Lenalee was practically family to him. Speaking of the young tyke, Nthanda woke up as Vanya was inspecting the wound, and Vanya quickly deposited him in the curve of Kanda's body between the window, wall, and him. The baby sleepily crawled over to Kanda, and he immediately grabbed a strand of hair.

"Don't do that," Kanda almost pleaded, but Nthanda ignored the statement and wrapped his fingers in it. The stoic infant stuck his other hand in his mouth, staring at Kanda pensively as Vanya continued her check-up.

"We arrived here yesterday. I had to carry you the entire way, and I was not very happy. One day, I am hoping that you have to do that for someone else. God's justice, no?" Vanya said, being uncharacteristically chatty. Pinning poor insects to a board had made her rather cheery, it seemed. Kanda didn't answer back, merely tugging on Nthanda's foot as the baby began to crawl down the bed towards his feet.

"We managed to get a transport on a truck from a farmer down to the south. I did not think we would make it with you still alive. You almost attacked me at one point, when we were resting. Gave me this, ja?" she said, leaning over him to look him in the face. He looked up, eyeing the yellowing bruise around her brow. Wait... he'd done that? He could vaguely remember something of that nature, but it was all a big, fat blur. Before he could get a good look, Vanya retreated again, picking things out of the neck wound, swabbing it to keep it clean. Kanda could do it himself, but he probably wouldn't have done a very good, thorough job of it.

Vanya suddenly slipped, one of the arms holding her up folding under her as it was unable to take her weight. She used Kanda as a prop, and he looked at her strangely as he noticed that her face had gone completely pale. He sat up slowly, taking her weight by the elbow as he did, and she took several deep breaths. He noticed that she was abnormally warm, and he wondered if perhaps he'd been sick with something more than just infection and he'd passed it on to her. Good God, what if he passed it on to Nthanda as well? He looked behind him at the child, but he seemed just fine, standing up with his pudgy hands gripping the windowsill.

"Vanya, are you sick?" Kanda asked bluntly. She shook under his grip, hair shielding her face. Quietly she whispered, "I'm fine. Let me go. I just need to sit." She attempted to stand, but Kanda yanked her back into a sitting position.

"Don't be a martyr. Tell me: are you sick?" he asked. He wondered if she'd tried hiding it from Din and Ellis as well? She held herself, and she didn't answer for a long time. Finally, she said, "Yes. I am sick. I... have an infection. Like you." That would explain why Nthanda was in such good condition, then. He hadn't passed anything on to the babe - he'd given it to Vanya. Kanda growled irritably. He hated martyrs. They always thought they were going to be saints or something foolish like that. He pushed her shoulder and said, "Lie down, then. I'll get you water, and you just lay there. If you move, I'll cut off your arm."

Bedside manner was not Kanda's forte.

As he went for water from the bathroom, he idly wondered where Din and Ellis could be...

* * *

 

"We're lost. We're lost. How in the world can we be lost if we're in the middle of a town that's not much bigger than a postage stamp?" Ellis' tirade went generally unheeded by Din. He'd had enough of the old lady to last him a lifetime. They'd left in the middle of the day to go and get some things from the local market. Instead, Ellis got sidetracked by a local diamond salesman, and she ended up buying five fake diamonds for almost a hundred pounds each, and as if to add insult to injury they were now hopelessly confounded about their location. They'd asked for directions from fifteen different people as to how they were to get to their hotel, and they'd received fifteen different answers.

"Womahn, let me t'ink for a momen', yeh? For deh love a God in deh heavens, I ain't never heard no womahn whine like you," he sighed in a long-suffering fashion, wiping the sweat off his forehead. Despite the fact it was now eight o' clock, it was still deathly humid. At least the air was cool. That was a small gift. He put on his smile, albeit wearily, as another woman came by. Ellis made indignant grumblings as Din walked up to her.

"Mum, could ye spare a sec'nd fuh two poor, lost trav'lers? We be needin' ta get to deh Konigsee Hotel, y'know, 'n we just need d'recshuns," he said, his warm voice giving his question tone and depth. The woman pursed her lips, her dark skin practically made of dark ebony under the night firmament, and she leaned towards him conspiratorially.

"En't nobohdy dat go down dat way, but... I believe I kin tell ye if I get a little start fer my memory," she said. Din winced as he opened his wallet surreptitiously. Two, measly looking bills stared up at him, and the coin pocket coughed dust. Exaggeratedly, the woman began to walk away, and Din sighed.

"I give you five quid, how that sound?" Din called, and the woman considered it. Shrugging, she walked back towards him, and she quickly gave him a run-through of how to get there. This time, Din was sure to pay very close attention to the streets the woman was talking about. Finally, she walked away, and as she did a small child ran up to her from behind Din, tapping her arm and smiling. Din waved to them and said to Ellis, "Methinks we got our wey back to deh hotel, Mum." Ellis clapped her hands in delight, ever energetic, if cranky.

"Wonderful! Now, I just need fifteen shillings. Dear, do you have fifteen shillings? I mean to get that beautiful little stuffed doll for Nthanda. Every child absolutely must have a doll. You can't have a childhood without one," Ellis said imperialistically, giving the impression of demanding. Din was used to this sort of behavior. Already, he had three different bags of doodads that Ellis had wanted to buy from street vendors, along with food. To the Lord above, she could eat like Death himself. Men would be put to shame in the light of her appetite.

"Alright, alright, I get deh do- My wallet. It's gone," Din said, suddenly in surprise. He patted his tan uniform, searching. He'd just had it... Suddenly, he remembered the young woman and the boy who'd run up to her, excited, and Din deflated as he moaned, "Oh, no, no, no." He threw up his hands, and Ellis frowned at him.

"Well, where is it?"

"... In de hends of a smohll chil' who just walked awey 'bout ten minutes ago."

* * *

 

"What did you do, swim in a cesspool?" Kanda grumbled irately as he uncovered the wounds along Vanya's side and arm. For the most part, her arm was fine, but her side was leaking pus, and it was obvious that despite their best efforts to keep it clean it was infected. Presumably, Kanda's had been infected by a piece of Akuma flesh still buried in his wound, but this was a more mortal sort of disease. Vanya continued to shake, open to the air and chilly. She grasped a towel to her front, closing her eyes as Kanda prodded the red, angry flesh around the wound. He took a wash cloth and began to clear away what he could off the wound. It seemed that they were doing nothing but taking care of wounds these days. They were lucky to go a single twenty-four hours before someone got hurt.

The two were silent, both of them almost seeming to be ultrasensitive to their respective predicaments, hers being her vulnerability and his being a certain sort of ignorance towards dealing with women, especially those with flesh exposed whether by extenuating circumstances or otherwise. Their conversation was terse and clipped, almost mechanical, as Nthanda rolled around the bed, playing with a string of rosary beads that Kanda had handed him from Ellis' suitcase. He'd never seen her use them, so he decided that perhaps they were more trinket than holy item. Besides, there was something endearing about a child playing with a length of rosary beads.

"Vanya, why do you pin bugs?" he suddenly asked out of the blue. He knew so little about his partner. She was both enemy and friend - though friend was an awfully strong word to describe the other side of their relationship. He didn't like the fact she was mysterious. It made her... somewhat dangerous. She had an upper hand, of sorts. Lavi's curiosity had sort of rubbed off on him, as well, and he couldn't help but ask. It was an odd habit he'd watched her perform many a time, even on the train they'd hitched a ride on.

"Tch, I do not just pin bugs. I collect species," Vanya elaborated almost condescendingly, immediately putting Kanda in mind to scrub harder than necessary. He adjusted the ladder as necessary over the bed, having already set up a system of strings in order to get the best lighting possible. The moon did a fair job, as well, but it had a tendency to create shadows and hide problems.

"That doesn't explain why," Kanda grumbled darkly. Vanya suddenly went very still again. She'd go through spells of becoming incredibly still and silent, usually calling Kanda to just bury her and be done with it. These spells only lasted a few moments, though, and she relaxed again. He guessed the pain was making her seize up and stiffen in response to control it, a practice he himself knew was short term. She would only tire herself out.

"My...twin brother did it. He could not... could not finish the collection before he died. We would catch and examine insects together as children," Vanya said quietly. Kanda chewed this idea over. She was doing it for her dead brother. How sweet. He could just about puke from it. It sounded like a stupid reason to continue a hobby. Couldn't she have just told him that she liked to collect dead bugs?

"What good does it do to finish his collection? He's dead," Kanda said bluntly, beating the topic over the head with a club. Along with bedside manner, tact also had much to be desired in regards to Kanda's social skills. Vanya stayed quiet several more moments, and Kanda kept cleaning. Almost as an afterthought, she stated, "It reminds me of him. I did not think he could be taken so quickly." Kanda peered at her face, realizing that she was quietly crying. Her nose dribbled, and she wiped at it, tears mingling with snot. She wasn't a loud crier or a pretty crier - she just... well, cried.

Kanda resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he started to bandage the wound, looking away from her. He felt uncomfortable watching a CROW cry. It was as if he couldn't believe what his eyes were telling him, and yet it was sitting right there in his presence. Vanya suddenly brought her knees to her chest, and Kanda almost grabbed his own side in sympathy. That had to hurt.

"Stay still. I'm not done yet," Kanda said, though his tone was gentler than he would've liked. It was an automatic response; it was as if he couldn't control it. Sighing to himself and facing away from her, he finally asked in a begrudging, almost sheepish, tone, "When... did he die?" Vanya's answer was very quiet, so quiet he almost didn't hear it.

"Two days before I reached you and Din in Joburg." Kanda's eyes widened at the realization of how fresh her brother's death must have been. He felt himself sober completely, his annoyance disappearing as if mist before the sun. In a way, he guessed he could empathize; Alma's death had been just as sudden to him, and, in a way... that wound had never truly healed either. After losing Alma so gruesomely, Kanda had been inconsolable, unreachable, and quiet as stone. It had taken a long while for the people in the European HQ to even get a word out of him. In a way, he was slightly amazed at just how able she was in the light of her brother's death.

"Were you close?" he asked quietly, turning his head to peer over his shoulder. Vanya looked over her shoulder at him, her bangs falling away to reveal the dots on her forehead that marked her as CROW. Kanda felt that old pinch of distrust, but for the moment he ignored it. Her lip quivered, and she put her hands to her mouth as she closed her eyes.

"Yes. Very close," she stated. Nthanda, at this point, had taken notice of Vanya, and he crawled over to the two with a curious expression. He pressed a hand to Vanya's face, and the woman blinked in surprise as the child looked up at Kanda. The baby waved a hand at Kanda and babbled almost indignantly, as if Kanda were disobeying him somehow. Kanda shook his head and bent to pick up the baby, careful to remain clear of Vanya as he did so. He took a hold of the upper arm of a single limb and -

The world changed in a way he had not expected. He was deeply within his mind's eye, as if it were his dominant pair rather than the eyes situated in his head. Through someone else's point of view, he could see a young man, also a CROW by the dots on his forehead, with black hair and a bright smile that he suspected was Vanya's brother. Information of her brother flooded him, all sorts of things that were useless yet precious, like the way he liked his eggs, his favorite sort of specimens, the fact that he had a fondness for coffee, his boundless enthusiasm towards his work. Automatically reminded of Alma, he supplied an exchange of information, aware that Vanya had gasped by a jolt of senses.

Kanda finally gained control once more before he could give too much away, and he yanked his hand back, leaving Nthanda staring up at him with a look that was too deep for a baby of only nine months to possess. Vanya and Kanda looked at the babe with a look akin to awe.

"What was that?" Vanya asked, wiping tears from her eyes. "Who was that?" Kanda felt shaken by the experience, suddenly feeling a backlash of grief. It was like he'd caught a wind of Vanya's own emotions and thoughts, and he felt sick to his stomach from the shared encounter. Kanda shook his head, and he said, "No one you need to know." He finished up quickly, careful not to touch Nthanda again, and he put everything away.

"Scoot over so I can sleep later. We're sharing," Kanda said abruptly, almost in an absent-minded manner. Vanya was appropriately shocked by the suggestion, and Kanda belligerently retorted, "It's not like we're going to sleep with each other in our condition. I'd rather jump in a pit full of vipers. You're in no condition to sleep on the floor, and I'm in no condition to be sleeping on the floor either. Suck it up and get over it. It's happening." Vanya didn't say anything else, only backing up as close to the window as she could. Kanda picked up the baby from the bed, and he walked over to the phone pack that Din had left behind.

Geez, they'd been gone so long...

* * *

 

"I am not going to carry you."

"Please. It's only another mile! How could you be cruel to such an old woman? I have arthritic knees!"

"Ellis, Mum, you en't dat old."

"I'm flattered by that phrase, but unfortunately I refuse to believe it. Wait, didn't we pass that stop sign before?"

"What sign? You mean dat street sign, Mum? No, nu-uh, we en't pass it 'fore. I... I t'ink..."

"No, I'm certain we've passed it twice already. See the little smudge? That's from me whacking this bag on it."

"Oh... but Mum... that means we been goin' in circles. 'N me d'recshuns en't wrong, cuz I wrote 'em down."

"I beg to differ, my dear. Perhaps we made a wrong turn somewhere."

"Den we should start over?"

"If we do that, we'll be even more lost than when we started..."

"So keep goin'?"

"Yes, I believe we keep going. Oh, dear, my poor, arthritic knees. All I asked for was a single piggyback ride, and from a young, agile man to boot, but do I get anything for my pains? Nooooo."

* * *

 

After finally figuring out how the phone worked, Kanda decided to call Lavi. He'd made sure Vanya was fast asleep first, which didn't take long considering her exhausted state. She must've been like that since Din and Ellis had left. He itched at his neck, the new skin irritating him. It still hurt like the devil, but at the least he wasn't feverish anymore. Kanda sat on the floor with Nthanda in his lap, playing with a strand of hair that had escaped the confines of his ponytail. Nthanda gurgled at Kanda, and the man put the phone between his ear and shoulder in order to keep his hands busy with the kid.

Finally, there was a dial tone, and he waited a few moments. Craning his neck was really beginning to stretch his wound, and he wasn't sure how long the connection would last. Out here in the middle of the African wilderness, reception was spotty, especially for a phone pack. Nthanda suddenly began to bounce up and down, babbling, almost as if he were dancing, and Kanda nearly smiled. The kid was something else. Nthanda stomped his feet and almost fell on his rump as Kanda caught him.

Suddenly, there was a response from the phone.

"Hello?" Kanda sighed imperceptibly with a touch of relief. Hearing a familiar voice was such a good feeling, even if it was that redhead. He sounded a bit preoccupied, though, as if there were other things on his mind. He was probably imagining all the skirts he was going to chase, more than likely. Kanda answered back in his usual, caustic way.

"Idiot, you kept me waiting. Don't you know that I'm in the middle of nowhere? Stupid connection could go out at any time," Kanda grumbled into the phone, being quiet so as to keep from waking the CROW in the bed not ten feet away. He could hear people speaking in the background, and Kanda guessed he must be in a phone room. He put in mind the question he was going to ask carefully, knowing that Lavi was an idiot and took things literally. Anything he asked, he had to word carefully because if he didn't he'd get exactly what he'd asked for - which wasn't necessarily what he was asking for.

"W-w-what are you calling for? You're not one to make social calls, after all," Lavi answered, his baritone voice quavering unexpectedly. Kanda frowned as he realized that Lavi sounded as if he were under a surprising amount of tension. It wasn't often that Lavi stuttered. His tongue as slick as an oil spill, and it was rare to hear him slip up when speaking. Kanda himself hardly got a stutter response even pointing a sword in his face. Something wasn't quite right; he could tell that almost immediately.

"Tch. Typical. Look, I need a favor," Kanda said, glancing over at Vanya. She had her back to him, and she'd chosen to sleep in pajamas, thank goodness. Her shoulder rose and fell with each breath, slow and steady. That was a good sign. She was still feverish, and Kanda reminded himself to take the blankets off. It was impossibly humid, and that'd make her body temperature harder to bring down. Realizing he was actually thinking about taking care of the CROW, he immediately slammed his train of thought to a halt. He shouldn't get attached - to either of these bozos. She wasn't part of the objective and therefore disposable; the baby was part of the objective, and therefore a mission in and of himself. He had to keep that in mind. Suddenly, he heard the sound of a bullet going through glass and something else.

"What was that?" Kanda asked, deadpan. Of course he was in the middle of a firefight. That was the only sort of time he could call him. Just his luck. In the background people screamed, belying Lavi's response of, "Nothing! Nothing, just, uh, tell me what you wanted." Kanda put Nthanda on his knee, and he bounced him up and down. Nthanda suddenly smiled, and Kanda felt a peculiar warmth within him as the kid flat-out enjoyed himself.

"I need some information on a mark, sort of like a seal. If you could dig around in the CROW's business, that would be good, too," Kanda said, hinting as to the subject matter of his query and where to find it. Lavi was oddly quiet as he contemplated. The sounds of fighting continued.

"Uh, yeah, sure, whatever you want," Lavi stated, and Kanda was immediately taken aback, looking at the phone from the corner of his eye with a look akin to disbelief. Did he just... give him what he wanted without a fuss? He just agreed to doing work for him without so much as a bargain. That was very strange indeed.

"I thought I'd have to beat it out of you through the phone," Kanda muttered honestly. He could practically hear Lavi's eye rattling around in his skull.

"Look, can you hurry this up? I'm a little busy at the moment." Heh, no kidding. It sounded as if a worldwide war was going on through the phone.

"Ha! Yeah right. You sit there all day and you sleep or annoy somebody. I know what you do on your downtime. Mostly because you waste all of mine." He could mess with him a little, couldn't he? Nthanda must've noticed the mischievous look in Kanda's eye, because he put his hands to his mouth with a pair of squinted, merry eyes. Kanda motioned for quiet from Nthanda with a slight smile, and Nthanda copied the motion. For a moment, Kanda actually felt proud. He understood.

"Just ... get on with it." Ah, getting a little snappy. He really must be nervous about something.

"...Alright. It's a horned mark, two horns inside a circle with writing circumscribed around it," Kanda said, describing it best he could.

"Ooooh, 'circumscribed.' You're finally using big boy words now." Now that sounded more like the Lavi Kanda knew and hated. He already had his retort up and running.

"Shut up. Just because I'm not freaking loquacious doesn't mean I can't tell my head from my back end. I'm just not a blithering idiot. The words are in some sort of Cyrillic alphabet, but it's definitely not the Cyrillic we know. I couldn't read any of it, anyhow."

"Alright, I can look it up. Do you need me to search anything in particular like certain files or paper? What did you see it on?" Kanda made a face of resignation. That one... was a little tougher to explain. More than likely, he wouldn't ask about it.

"Human flesh."

"...Ah." He was right. He didn't ask.

Kanda decided to state the obvious. He said,"You're in a fight, aren't you?" There was a pause as Lavi deliberated his words, and finally he spoke.

"Uh, yeah, just a bit of a scuffle." As if to immediately refute him, there was a scream. A scuffle - Lavi's definition of scuffle must mean 'massacre'.

"Tch."

"Um, hey, Kanda? Is everything alright? You sound -" Kanda hadn't expected Lavi to notice the strain in his voice. He shifted his shoulder to alleviate the stress on his neck.

"Everything's fine. Just a flesh wound to the neck. I'll survive. You don't sound good yourself." Two could play this game. Since the last he'd heard of him, Kanda could say that Lavi sounded terrible. He probably didn't know it, but his voice sounded rough and scratchy, almost like he hadn't been using it. There was a peculiar nervous energy in his words that spoke of something... sinister, almost. Kanda didn't like it. As much as Lavi was a nuisance and a retard, he was also a friend and comrade that he could count on. There were very few people in the world like that.

Mind you, that did not mean Kanda liked him. Heaven forbid Kanda ever start liking him. He'd chop off both his eggs before he started liking the redheaded, lovestruck fool.

"I've been better. But, you know, I'll survive." Huh, he thought he was so clever, echoing him. He had to hand it to him, only Lavi could think that sort of thing up in the middle of a battle.

"Like always?" Kanda asked

"Like always," Lavi sighed.

"Don't die. I need someone to beat up when I get home," Kanda ordered, putting Nthanda in the crook of his arm. The kid had slowly begun to drift to sleep with his fingers entangled in his hair. Lavi chuckled a bit.

"Hey, I need someone to annoy when I come back. Don't you die," Lavi challenged, and Kanda scoffed.

"As if. Idiot." He could almost feel Lavi's smile through the phone. He was actually kind of scared that he could seemingly sense the guy through the phone. What was he, his sister or something? He hung up on him, and he slowly got up. His back and shoulders hurt, almost seeming to creak as he stood up. Weary and sore, he placed Nthanda on the bed gently next to Vanya. Without waking her, Kanda pulled down the covers to expose her back and arms to the cool air, hoping to bring down her internal body temperature to a safer level. Kanda himself contemplated the sleeping arrangements, rolling his shoulders to try and loosen them up.

If he was honest, he was a little scared to sleep next to a girl. He'd never had this problem before. Even though he'd told Vanya to suck it up and get over it, he himself was having issues trying to decide if this was the best idea or not. Still, thinking of the soreness of his back and neck and sleeping in a chair quickly changed his mind about that particular idea. It wasn't so much that he was afraid of himself - he was afraid of her. He wasn't sure where it came from or why he felt it, but he was certain it definitely had to do with the fact she was a girl.

He was perfectly fine sleeping next to Bookman or Noise or Daisya or even Froi. Guys were... well, guys. They burped, farted, and made rude jokes. They didn't just touch each other or cry or any of that. They were easy to understand. Women ... were a different matter all together. To be honest, he had to say that women were kind of scary. Not scary as in life-threatening, but just... scary.

Taking a big breath, he sucked it up and got over it. He climbed in bed, trying to ignore her heat as he closed his eyes and made himself forget she was there.

* * *

 

The hotel came into view.

"Oh... oh my goodness gracious, we made it!" Ellis said, completely enthralled by the fact they'd made it. The city was deserted at night, and she'd been scared traveling by herself, despite Din and the small derringer she had in her purse. She was laden with bag upon bag, and Din himself was carrying a large amount of cargo. He looked over the array in his arms to almost collapse with relief at the sight of the hotel.

"God is good," he gasped as he sat climbed the stoop. He jiggled the handle of the hotel door, happy to finally be here, that they might get an actual bed, a shower, a toilet...

Only to find the door locked.

The two stared for a while before Ellis roared, broke down the door with a booted foot, and waltzed in as if she owned the place. Din was surprised she had that much strength in those old legs, especially given her 'arthritic knees', but he ambled in after her never the less.

She trod up the stairs towards their room, and Din made sure to get ahead of her. He had first dibs on that bathroom. They were both stinky, nasty, and travel worn. He was getting that shower. He walked into the room and immediately stopped as he realized that there were people sleeping.

"Darlings, Mummy is ho -! Oh dear, what is it?" Ellis stated irately as Din stopped her mid-sentence. He put a finger to his lips as he pointed to the bed. Ellis put a hand to her mouth as she was about to say something on the impropriety of men and women sleeping in the same bed with a lack of matrimony when she realized that it was the two people she would least have to worry about. Nevertheless, she kept it in mind to speak to them tomorrow, though for now she only smiled secretly, bemused.

Kanda was curled around Nthanda who in turn was nestled against Vanya who faced the wall and window. Quietly the two tiptoed into the room, deciding it was best just to leave them be, depositing their things as quietly as manageable.

It wasn't every day a CROW and an Exorcist managed to get along so well they could actually sleep next to each other. No use breaking that fragile peace now.


	10. A Far, Sweet Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which nightmares, earaches, and spars collide.

He found himself in a valley, a massive rift in between tall, sheer mountains that almost blocked the moon. His steps were so loud in the quiet that they seemed to reverberate against the walls. Whispers flashed past him as he turned his head this way and that, trying listlessly to find the source of the voices. On every crag, a shadow seemed to perch, a half-formed face peering over the rocks. He shouted into the gloom as he walked along the bottom of the valley, calling out names he could no longer remember once they'd been issued from his mouth. Chanting took the place of the whispers, growing louder and louder from behind as he progressed, but he could not turn himself around in order to see the chanters. The shadows seemed to thicken, the shades take shape. As he walked, he realized he knew them, though the thought was vague in his mind.

The shades came down, leading him towards some destination. He followed along as if his feet knew the path better than his eyes. Idly, he recalled the faces that were racing past him.

Twi Chang walked past him, despite her current breakneck pace. Her husband trailed behind. Oddly, he had to laugh at that. Edgar could never quite keep up with his wife. A few interns that he'd been familiar with walked ahead of him. More scientists joined them on their exodus. They seemed to solidify more and more as the chanting grew louder. Dogs began to howl upon the ridges of the valley, their mournful song giving the effect of an eerie funeral procession. The shades flinched at the sound of howling, and just as soon as they'd appeared, they'd gone. He was left alone. The chanting had stopped.

And then he realized he was standing before a lake. It was long, dark, so glassy smooth that it resembled a mirror as he stared at his reflection within the water. Absentmindedly he remembered seeing this mirror before, a burst of déjà vu. The image in the water was the same as the last time he'd seen it – a man wearing white war paint, his sword slung over his back, hair tied tight into a tail with a leather cord. However, he was missing something – of that he was sure. He was meant to have some sort of companion, but he couldn't remember for the life of him who it was.

His image was joined by another, one he had seen in another life, a literal waking dream. She looked over his shoulder, that serene smile on her face. Those piercing eyes watched him in the water-mirror. His own eyes widened as recognition flooded him. He turned around, and there she stood, waiting patiently. She was just as he'd seen her all those times in the labs, and, more importantly, in his memories and midnight dreams. He lifted a hand to her face, stroking the skin. Porcelain smoothness met his fingertips. Silk strands of hair trailed over the back of his hand as he touched her hair, and she stepped closer to him, her heat so real and so near. How long had it been since he'd last seen her? He'd forgotten what it was like to touch her, to know her presence.

"You," he simply stated. She almost laughed, that fey smile flitting across her visage. He remembered he had loved that about her – her vivacity and spontaneity, so different from his strict, rigid mind and constancy.

"Me," was all she answered. Depthless eyes searched his for what seemed an eternity as she took his face in her hands, drawing him close, close enough that he could feel her breath wash over his own mouth, before she halted.

"You waited," she stated. Sadly, his eyes tightened as he reached for her, so near to him yet so, so far away—

The dream dissolved with the noise of a baby crying, and Kanda sat up in a cold sweat, feeling sick. He swiftly stood up out of bed, walking over to Nthanda's makeshift crib. The baby gasped as he cried, and Kanda groaned to himself as he rubbed his temples. Nthanda had had some very bad earaches, of which there was no cause they could discern. All they could do was soothe him the best they could. Kanda picked up the baby as gently as he was able, though he felt oddly clumsy after waking up. He cradled the baby, but Nthanda continued to cry mercilessly. Kanda hadn't been able to sleep for the past four days. Though he was used to running on the minimum amount of rest, this was stressing his abilities. Pretty soon they'd have to go to a doctor, if they could find one within range.

Their trek from the settlement of Lobatse had been made on foot. Though they managed to flag down trucks now and again, for the most part few were willing to take the travelers, especially with a screaming baby. The unrest in the area made people paranoid, and one look at Kanda had truck-drivers gunning their engines. On just about every radio band, they were warning against a man with Kanda's exact description, claiming him as a supporter of the current government and therefore an enemy of the militia. Needless to say, Kanda ignored such allegations and kept on going. The only inconvenience was the occasional militia transport, and they could usually hear them from a mile away.

Akuma were more of a problem, seeing as the ones in this area were high-leveled because of a lack of Exorcists to continually weed them out. They were crafty, too. More than once, Vanya had stepped on a truck first for safety issues only to be accosted by a face full of gun barrels. Several times, they had had no choice but to make a run for it rather than fight, especially given Nthanda's condition.

Kanda carried the baby over to the window, hoping that perhaps a fresh breeze might ease the baby back into sleep. He lifted the sash, and the cool, African night air wafted in, but it didn't abate the baby's screaming. Outside, Kanda could see Din keeping watch on the balcony. Pretty soon it would be his turn to take the watch, and the samurai wanted to shoot himself in the head. He couldn't have been asleep for more than a few hours, three at best. He wasn't sure how long he could keep this up. That dream had drained him as well, and he felt his mind boiling under the half-remembered sensations.

He'd seen her. He'd seen her. In the labs in China, Kanda had only ever managed to catch ghostly glimpses of that woman as she trailed behind him amid the pillars. Even as old as he was now with the memories of his past life at his disposal, he could not fully remember her face. The dream was fading from memory as well, leaving a fuzzy patch where she'd been. Kanda had wondered more than once if it was not a fact that he couldn't remember what she looked like, but that he didn't want to remember. She was the last, and only, tie to his previous life. He'd sworn to her that he'd wait.

And he had. He'd waited some thirty-nine years. And he still didn't have the foggiest idea of where she could be, what she looked like, or even her very name. All he had was an apparition that had ceaselessly followed him, a remnant of those memories of a time when he was not the him he was now. It sometimes made him wonder if there was a point to looking. After all, he, the other one, had made the promise to her. Kanda had not. A vestige of old, chivalrous pride must still remain, because every time Kanda saw a woman in a wide, hoop skirt and flowing sleeves with her hair in a ponytail, he could do nothing but stare and hope that he'd found her.

She'd been so close…

There was a knock on the door, hardly heard over Nthanda's pained wailing. Kanda felt a pang deep within him, something he'd slowly grown used to over the past few days. He hated to hear the kid cry like this. Crying for food, for water, for toys, that was different from the utter, agonizing screams the baby had right now. Perhaps it was human instinct, but Kanda would give anything to make his pain stop. If only to stop his blasted screaming.

"'S unlocked," Kanda said tersely, not willing to move from the window. Din's head poked through, and he smiled wanly. In the dark, he was near invisible.

"Mistuh Kanda, 's youh turn for deh watch. I 'pologize, dough. Perraps I tek a sec'nd watch, letcha sleep a bit longuh, what wid deh babe," Din offered, his accent more pronounced now that he was tired. Kanda was tempted to take the offered rest, but he wasn't going to let something like a little lack of sleep keep him from making sure his mission was completed. He'd lose that much more response time if he were asleep and had to get back up again. He grumbled, "I'm fine. Get to bed." Din hesitated at the door, but he finally withdrew into the confines of the suite room the Order had put on their itinerary.

Kanda thought about the Order's list of hotels already paid for within the English Protectorate of South Africa as he walked out onto the balcony. Even now, they couldn't open a portal, despite the fact Kanda knew that Allen had been found. He'd had a short conversation with Lavi while he was en route to Guatemala, and the redhead had been awfully confused about the entire premise. He had also made no headway on Kanda's last request, seeing as his own research was being waylaid by the fact he was going to be stuck on a boat for a while. Kanda didn't mind – it wasn't a pressing matter. Still, he made his annoyance very clear, and Lavi had abruptly hung up without another word, very odd for the redhead. Something was definitely wrong on that side of the world for Lavi to give up the last word.

The samurai sat down on the balcony overlooking the forests beyond. This portion of South Africa was heavily wooded with thickets of trees and patches of open, green land. It was no wonder that the English and Dutch had come to snatch it up. It looked remarkably similar to the European forests. Kanda, however, would've been more pleased with an open plain. In the trees it was too easy to imagine all sorts of things hiding.

Nthanda's wailing reached a new pitch and volume, and Kanda knew that he was going to have to take him to a doctor tomorrow. They'd thought the earache would go away on its own, but that obviously was not the case. Kanda extended a finger to the baby wearily, feeling like his eyelids were about to slam shut, and Nthanda took the finger and teethed on it. On top of the earache, he was having teething issues as well. From what Ellis had to say, it was unusual for a baby to get teeth so late, but it wasn't anything serious.

"Some babies just happen to be late bloomers," she'd shouted over the massive noise. Kanda scoffed to himself as he thought about the woman making a raucous, nightly noise on the couch. Kanda had never realized just how loud that woman could snore until he'd shared a room with all four of his companions in Lobatse. No one got sleep that night.

As the baby gummed on his finger with sharp, nearly-there baby teeth, he lessened his sobbing, but continued to gasp and cry. Kanda winced as the sharp corner of a new tooth managed to bite down hard enough through the calluses to actually pain him. He made another mental note to get the kid a pacifier, if they ever managed to find another town.

This was a fairly fancy inn, but it was also a midway point between two towns. It would take them probably two days to reach the next big settlement, a trip Kanda was dreading. His foul mood kept growing fouler with every step they took, and it was taking a toll on his traveling companions. Even Din was careful about what he said to the samurai lest he receive a verbal lashing from the dour Japanese Exorcist. The only one who appeared somewhat unfazed was Ellis, who continued to be prim and proper to such an extent that Kanda was tempted to smash every single tiny fork and teacup in her little dinner set.

There was a soft knock on the balcony door, and Kanda didn't even bother to look.

"Go away. I'm busy," he grumbled. He did not want company. Company meant he actually had to interact. Interaction meant actual effort on his part. Interaction meant people.

"I hev somezing to stop ze babe from crying," a soft voice stated over Nthanda's sobbing cries, and equally soft footsteps padded on the platform. Kanda continued to stare straight ahead out over the forests, and Vanya sat down next to him as best she could with the limited space. He didn't deign to scoot over to give her room.

The CROW reached for the babe, and Kanda shot her a dangerous look out of the corner of his eye. Vanya, for once, hesitated before taking the baby from Kanda, and Nthanda resumed crying at an increased volume.

"Now look what you did. And I just got him to quit," Kanda snorted, his tone scathing. Vanya was expressionless as ever as she turned the baby over on his side and took a small dropper. She began to drip something into the baby's ear, a solution from a small bottle. The babe suddenly began to quiet, and Kanda narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the CROW.

"What was that?" he demanded, and Vanya gave one of her few expressions, a lifted eyebrow. She handed back the baby, who was beginning to fall asleep, exhausted.

"A homemade remedy. Alexei and I… vould geht constant eareches. My father vould drip it into our ears et night, end in ze day it vould hurt less. I edded a small portion of dat pain medication I vas given," Vanya explained, the last comment followed up by a swift and accusing look at Kanda. He gave his usual answer: "Tch."

Vanya's infection had forced him to take her to the hospital against her will. She had a very distinct hate for hospitals and the ilk living within them, so Kanda literally carried her kicking and screaming. It was for her own good. After all, she was obviously much better now, and she could resume her duties as Nthanda's personal guard dog and playmate. All's well that ends well. Kanda was silent, not bothering to add further comment, and Vanya got up.

"I ken take ze vatch, if you need to sleep," she offered, and Kanda gave her a disgusted glance.

"I don't need help," he stated simply, shifting in his spot on the balcony. The marble floor was hard and unforgiving on bony behinds.

"Oh, I em shore, you do not," Vanya retorted in a sarcastic tone as she leaned over him. Kanda's very aura seemed to darken at the implication that he couldn't do his job, and Vanya straightened back up, looking over the forests.

"I ken not sleep, anyvays. You, on ze other hand, hev dat ahbeelity. Use it," she urged. "Practically, you need rest the mohst. You are the ohnly defense ve have against ze Akuma. Somevon can die from you neglecting yoorself." Kanda couldn't beat her logic. Despite his near inhuman limits, this baby had pushed all of them back as far as he could go. Kanda didn't think he'd even taken a crap for the past three days he was so preoccupied with taking care of the kid. It seemed like every other minute the kid would poof and disappear for a few minutes, and Kanda would have to go and track him down. Somehow he had some sort of intuitive sense as to where the baby would be after a teleport, and for that Kanda was thankful. He'd nearly lost the kid countless times. To add to the workload, the baby was sick, hungry, and constantly in need of attention some way or another. Even in his sickened state, the kid wanted to get into everything, and Kanda had to be sure to follow him where ever he went. This was the most tiring trip he'd ever been on.

"Fine," he grumbled in angry dejection. The baby was only whimpering now, and he reached for a strand of Kanda's hair. The following tug was strangely reassuring to the man, and he cradled the baby carefully as he stood up.

"Vat did you dream about?" Vanya suddenly asked, and he stared at her back. She was facing the woods, outlined by wan moonlight. He was struck by the question as if someone had beat him up the side of the head.

"What?" he asked, not sure he'd heard correctly.

"You vere speaking in yoor sleep. Vat did you dream about?" she asked, a hint of curiosity in her voice. Kanda walked away without another word.

She was something he could share with no one. It was his personal crusade, his one last goal, perhaps his only goal for this life. He couldn't tell anyone about her, not in depth. For some reason, it would feel wrong.

As he went back to his room, he felt a stirring of loss so profound it shook him while he stood by the crib they'd fashioned from a basket, some sheets, and chicken mesh. Vanya's contraption was surprising resilient. As he laid Nthanda back inside on the sheets, he could feel a foreign lump build in his throat, like someone had clogged it with clay.

He'd only felt this sort of grief once, a long time ago. It lurked within every thought of her, that inordinately massive feeling of sorrow. He knew he'd never find another like her. Not in this life, not in the next life, not in the life after that, if it went on and on and on. Kanda was not a sentimental man, but he knew what love felt like. His past memories could give him that much information. Still, they were the ghosts of feelings, the barest wisps of the essence of those emotions. Just enough to give him a taste, the smallest amount, and leave him longing to know what the actual thing was like yet always knowing he'd never reach it.

He was hardwired to circumvent this thing, 'love', in order to complete his purpose. The concept fit nowhere in his equation. Without the memories stored within his brain, if he could call it his, he would've never known what love actually felt like. Perhaps that was why they had been so intent on destroying him. He was damaged goods. His equation had been tampered with. He was anomalous in ways that Alma had not been.

And yet here he was, and here Alma was not.

The upwelling of grief crescendoed until he didn't think he could contain it. It had been a long time since he'd thought of either Alma or the woman he was searching for, much less both of them at the same time. Everything he loved, everything he touched, seemed to wither away from him. Perhaps his arrogance and cold demeanor were a subconscious means of protecting those around him. After all, if a person could not understand love or replicate and reciprocate it, didn't that mean he would somehow hurt those around him in one fashion or another?

Feeling numb, he realized he was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. As a kid, he'd stared at another ceiling, one with friezes and dark shadows that created faces and shapes. He and Alma would point and tell each other what they thought each one was. Kanda's had always been something oddly morose, or perhaps strangely morbid. Alma's was usually something verging on the absolutely absurd.

"That one's a bean riding on a donkey to a castle with a princess waiting for him to save her!"

"Alma, that's stupid. It's a bear eating a donkey, and it's not running to a castle, it's trying to throw itself off a cliff."

"Awww, come on, Yuu, that's terrible! Sheesh, you're so negative."

"It's a lot more interesting than your bean on a donkey."

"What about that one? Doesn't it remind you of Twi when…"

Abruptly, Kanda realized that he had almost never dug up memories of his life before the Incident. He felt breathless as each one led to another, skipping around to those few bright moments in his life in the labs. Some of them were very fuzzy. He could only really remember one defining portion of the memory, usually some colors or a sound. Others were so incredibly clear, it was like it had happened mere hours ago.

And, all of a sudden, he realized he missed his best friend. This was the sort of harebrained journey Alma would've enjoyed. A mission across the African continent with nothing but a baby and their wits – it practically shouted Alma.

But he wasn't here.

Kanda really, really, really wished he could go home. He wasn't being a ninny or a whiner or any of those things he hated; he truly knew that he needed to go home and take a break. He was becoming emotionally compromised the longer he stayed here, and that would impair his judgment.

It didn't help that he just wanted to go to the training room and beat the ever-living snot out of a few rookie Finders to make himself feel better. Shamelessly, he knew that he beat people up as a pick-me-up. It was therapeutic somehow. And he only ever challenged people who were willing to fight – it wasn't like he found random passersby and socked them dead in the face. There was no enjoyment in that. Not to mention it was petty.

With these thoughts in mind, he began to drift off to sleep. Thankfully, he didn't dream.  
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Another imaginary enemy was sliced to shreds. Ellis had called their little trip to a halt after she'd discovered a bunion on her toe, and she'd acted as if her entire foot was going to fall apart. Yet another invisible target succumbed to a steel blade. In fact, Ellis had the gall to ask Kanda if he'd carry her! The next adversary went down in ribbons, a poor sapling that had had so much to live for. And then, to top it all off, Ellis had refused to move once they'd realized that it wasn't even serious.

Kanda did another eight-stroke lotus bloom strike, the vacuum created by the sword blade enough to actually suck dust into the strokes and paint the air with the adjoining attack. The dust smacked against a tree, cutting straight into the bark, but it didn't fell it. Kanda snorted. He was getting soft.

Nthanda sat on the ground with Din, wearily banging on his drum with a slowness born of exhaustion. The baby had been listless and cranky after his earache, but he was definitely in better shape today. The only person allowed to pick him up now was Kanda, and it was playing havoc on the samurai's nerves. At random moments in the day, the baby would cry, and the only one who could console the poor thing was the long-haired man who wanted nothing to do with the kid for the next few days.

"Oooh, good job. Now again, with feeling!" Ellis said from her perch on a fence, and Kanda resisted the urge to cut off her skirts and let her walk all the way to the next town in her underwear. He could feel a twitch develop in his eye, and the heat was not helping at all. Luckily the trees provided quite a bit of shade. Vanya was lounging on the ground, lazily playing with her switchblades. She'd recently restocked on spell tags, and Kanda had never quite realized just how much time it took to paint every individual tag. It had taken the better part of five hours on a rickety cart pulled by oxen to paint enough for a single binding spell. Kanda just about went cross eyed watching her paint the same thing over and over.

"How about again, on your face," he muttered under his breath, and Ellis asked, "Excuse me, would you repeat that?"

"Nothing, Granny. Just talking about giving you an impromptu face lift," Kanda retorted, and Ellis let her mouth hang open.

"Well, pardon me for my age and wisdom! It's not something I can control, dear, I'll have you know! Besides, I'm not a day over forty-five," Ellis professed with a flourish, and Kanda grumbled, "No, you're too many days over forty-five." He suddenly directed a slash at the post she was sitting on, and with hardly a groan it suddenly collapsed under her, dumping the lady on the dusty ground. She huffed as she picked herself up in a massive pile of fabric and indignation. Din snickered, and Nthanda ignored the commotion. Vanya slowly clapped, and Kanda gave a cheeky bow.

"If you are so good et vat you do, pehrheps you vould not mind giving me ze honor of a spar?" Vanya asked in a mock formal tone, mimicking a man asking for a dance.

"Tch." Taking that as an affirmative, Vanya very suddenly lunged in a blur of black cloth and bandages, and Kanda easily blocked a dig from a knife. They were careful to stay away from their spectators in case a slash went wide or a knife was deflected on accident. Sparks literally flew between the two as they furiously went for first blood. Kanda could actually feel sweat running down his neck. Vanya herself looked like she was beginning to run out of breath. This was the first time they'd actually fought for a while. Despite the Akuma attacks, Kanda had had no actual problems with the Level Ones and Twos, and the Threes had been so numerous that he dared not fight with Nthanda strapped to him. Unburdened by his charge, he had a freedom of movement he'd forgotten about completely.

Vanya herself had not sparred at all since her mishap at the bridge. She'd exercised rigorously once she was able, but actual footwork and knife-play had been thrown to the wayside these past few days on the road. Both were very aware of just how rusty they were with actual technique and finesse as they pushed each other back and forth across their stretch of dirt next to the road.

Duck, parry, switch, sidestep, block, parry again, dodge, slash, there's an opening –

It was a dance that both had forgotten. They were clumsy at first, stepping on each other's toes, making mistakes as they left themselves unguarded, and making unnecessarily flourished moves. However, after the first two minutes, they had fallen into an easy rhythm and begun to understand the other's fighting style. Both were dripping after the next two minutes, easily realizing that they were both almost equal in regards to their chosen weapons. However, Kanda had drawn first blood, and Vanya had yet to make a scratch on either the blade or its owner. Vanya's expressionless face twitched into her signature brittle smile as Kanda regarded her from a distance, the both of them making mental moves and formulating plans against their opponent.

"Ellis could move faster than you with all her skirts," Kanda taunted, and Vanya cocked her head in response.

"Mine grandmother hed two broken feet, end she hed better footwahrk than you do," Vanya retorted back. Suddenly, the two rejoined in a flurry of slashes and parries. Kanda didn't dare use his extra strength and speed for this duel. He still had a bit of honor left to him. It would've been unfair if he'd used his complement of other abilities against her. After all, she'd refrained from using her spells and other assorted goodies. This was a pure battle of blades.

The two locked against each other, two knife blades crossed against a samurai blade at hip height. Both contenders' arms shook as they struggled to hold the block. They were hairsbreadths away from each other, Vanya's head just under Kanda's shoulder. Compared to the bigger man, she looked like a fragile porcelain doll – albeit a very dangerous one.

"You're good," Vanya said, her brittle smile turning to an all-out grin. Kanda had to say he was enjoying himself as well. It wasn't often he came up against someone who was almost as proficient as himself in the art of blades. It'd been a long time since he'd met an actual challenge. The last had been at the Order Headquarters after Lavi had wagered an entire month's worth of soba noodles against his yakiniku. Needless to say, Kanda had won after a grueling two hour duel with the redhead.

"Wrong – I'm better," Kanda corrected as he suddenly drew his blade upwards and sidestepped the flashing pair of switchblades. He aimed a smack with the flat of his blade at her back, but she was already ducking beneath it. Kanda recalibrated the strike, switching from his right hand to his left, and swung down. The CROW danced away from the blade, nearly jackknifing in midair to keep clear. Vanya stepped in close, too close for him to use his blade properly, and with a light step used his knee as a literal stepping stool. She suddenly sailed over his shoulder, and Kanda ducked as knives penetrated the air above his head. She was fast, and this was only just after her recovery.

He pivoted, flicking the blade with his wrist behind him, and Vanya was forced to dance away yet again, giving Kanda the necessary breathing room to come up with a rudimentary plan. It was only after a few seconds of glancing at Vanya that he noted she was holding something between two fingers. His eyes widened as he felt his ponytail and realized that there was a small strand of hair missing, the sharp, newly cut edge prickling against his fingers. Vanya lifted a teasing eyebrow as she waved the strand of hair. Kanda glowered at her, standing up into his near-six-foot frame. Vanya drew up to her entire four-foot-eleven frame, putting the strand of hair into a pocket.

"You're better? Are you shoor?" she asked, the first time Kanda had seen her remotely playful.

"Tch." The eye-twitch was back. That should've been the first indicator of how far things were going to go downhill.

"Ooooh, I think things are heating up," Ellis stated, watching enraptured. Din winced as the fighting became that much fiercer. Those sparks were getting dangerously large. Did they have to hit each other that hard?

"You t'ink we should stop dem 'fore it gets serious…?" Din asked. Ellis whooped with a pumped fist as Kanda kicked Vanya's legs out from under her.

"You can't be serious. This is the most excitement we've had since that hooker in Lobatse sat in your lap and asked if you would like to make use of her services!" Ellis said, galled at the very notion of stopping such an interesting altercation. It wasn't often that CROW and Exorcists allowed spectators to their little matches, Ellis knew that. Din stared at the sky in bewilderment. Nthanda watched with apt deliberation, his little child mind working to understand the scene in front of him. He started to beat his drum with a little more fervor, babbling as he did so.

"Come on, walk it off, walk it off!" Ellis shouted as Kanda took a tumble in the grass. That little girl was a lot stronger than she looked, but then again, she could actually fend off Kanda's blade with what looked like hardly any effort. By now they were tiring out significantly, their blows becoming more and more haphazard. Din winced as Vanya finally got her cut in, a shallow line across Kanda's cheek. Kanda's own corresponding blood letting was leaking from Vanya's jaw. Of course, the two were getting sloppier and sloppier, and their spar was quickly devolving into a battle of taunts, insults, and underhanded shots.

"Mistuh Kanda mus' be real mad she got a piece of 'is hair. Sheesh, Missuz Vanya is strong. That sword went pretty far and… now they're just punching each other," Din stated in a deadpan, unsurprised voice. The both of them were hurling insults in their respective languages, and this was becoming more of a dirt-wrestling-match than a spar.

"Whack him a good one! Come on, you can do better than that!" Ellis shouted through cupped hands, and Nthanda babbled his own response, smacking his drum enthusiastically. Vanya suddenly crashed into the fence, and she lay there for a moment, dazed, in the heap of wood. She suddenly launched herself with a few Russian curses at the samurai beckoning her with two fingers.

"Ouch! I didn' t'ink someone could bend that way," Din stated. They were slowing down at the least. Din was beginning to finally enjoy himself, now that it was clear that neither was going to injure the other. Vanya was slide tackled into the dust, and she quickly followed up with a swift kick to the head. Ellis whistled loud as Kanda finally pinned Vanya completely, and the samurai grabbed one of Vanya's abandoned knives.

"Ooooh dear," Ellis muttered, swiftly trying to get up amid her massive pool of skirts.

However, she didn't have much to worry about. Kanda situated his knees on Vanya's arms and dragged out one of her braids. With a single snip, he took it off, and he dangled it in her glowering face.

"Who's better now?" Kanda taunted childishly, pocketing his trophy.

"We'll see," Vanya promised. The two of them extricated themselves from each other and dusted off. The two regarded each other, Vanya with a piece of hair dangling in her face and Kanda with a single, short piece sticking straight out of his ponytail. It may have been Ellis's imagination, but it seemed that the two looked at each other with a small modicum of respect, at least underneath the layers of antagonism and annoyance. It was not so much that each had met their match – it was obvious that in a straight fight, Kanda would win if it weren't for his immature streak. More to the point, the other had proven they were able to defend their reputation and abilities.

Kanda picked up Nthanda, who was staring at the two warriors listlessly. Suddenly started to swing his arms about, mimicking the harried, quick thrusts of a knife fighter and the long, languid arcs of a samurai.

"Tch. We're a bad influence," Kanda noted with the slightest shade of a smile. Nthanda burbled, and Din laughed.

"Met'inks, he tryin' to taunt ya, Mistuh Kanda, into a fight," he chuckled. Ellis tutted.

"Enough of this tomfoolery," she said huffily, lifting her skirts as she headed towards the road. "We really must be going." Kanda and Din shared a look as Vanya trailed behind her.

"She ees right. Sunset's coming," she stated. Kanda and Din picked up their bags and began to follow. Cheekily, Vanya dangled the strand of hair over her shoulder, and Kanda glowered.

Soon. Just… Soon.


End file.
